'Don't leave me, Hettie. Do you think that this is truth, and that William has his reason?'
'He seems to have it, perfectly; he has given a clear account of things from the first—I fear it is true.'
'Does any one know of this besides you and your brother?'
'No human being as yet.'
'Depend upon it, Hettie, if my father has instigated this act, he has been in some way thwarted in his design; for his temper, never very good, has been outrageous for some time past; so much so, that I have made up my mind to leave him and this region for ever. There is but one thing which keeps me; you and your mother are the only persons in the world that I care much about—and you I love as I do my life. If you will marry me, Hettie, I will get together all I have got; it will be enough to purchase us a place far away from here, and we will take your mother, and Bill, too, if he gets well; and how happy we shall be.'
Hettie was deeply affected, but she felt that she must deal plainly with him.
'You must not talk so, David; you and I can never be married.'
'You are ashamed of me already, Hettie. My father's disgrace, I see, is to be mine.'
'I shall never attach to you, David, any wrong your father has done—but let us say no more about this. You have ever been kind to me and my family; all that a sister can do for you, I will; beyond this, I hope you will not urge me. But there are some things to be thought of that must be done soon. Mr. Rutherford ought not to be kept ignorant of this matter. I have, out of kindness to you, told you what I have heard, and with a hope that you will make an effort to recover these papers, and thus in part frustrate an evil design, and perhaps save your father from a great calamity. William has told me that he has some faint recollection of feeling the trunk taken from his grasp, while he lay in that helpless condition. You think your father has not got it; probably then, it is in the hands of some person who does not realize the value of it, and may easily be induced to relinquish it.'
'I will do what I can, Hettie, to find out; but I caution you to let no person know a word of all this, at least not until I have failed in finding out some clue to it. Should Rutherford know what you do, and make attempts to search, or to expose matters, it would be the very way, as things are here, to have it put where no one can ever be the wiser for it. If my father has not got the trunk or the papers—and I don't believe he has, for the reason I have told you—it is probably in the hands of some one who has taken it from Bill, and is afraid to say any thing, for fear he would be charged with an attempt to murder.'