Neither answered for a moment, then Georgina gulped and found her voice. “It’s--it’s a secret,” she managed to say.
“Oh,” he answered, growing instantly grave at the sound of that word. “Then I mustn’t ask any questions. We must always keep our secrets. Sometimes it’s a pity though, when one has to promise to do so. I hope yours isn’t the burden to you that mine is to me.”
This was the first time he had spoken to them of the promise they had made to him and Belle. With a look all around as if to make certain the coast was clear, he said:
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you children ever since that day you had the rifle, and now’s as good a chance as any. I want you to know that I never would have promised what I did if it could have made any possible difference to Mother. But lately she seems all confused about Danny’s trouble. She seems to have forgotten there was any trouble except that he went away from home. For months she’s been looking for him to walk in most any day.
“Ever since I gave my word to Belle, I’ve been studying over the right and wrong of it. I felt I wasn’t acting fair to Danny. But now it’s clear in my mind that it _was_ the right thing to do. I argue it this way. Danny cared so much about saving Emmett from disgrace and Belle from the pain of finding it out, that he was willing to give up his home and good name and everything. Now it wouldn’t be fair to him to make that sacrifice in vain by telling while it can still be such a death-blow to Emmett’s father and hurt Belle much as ever. She’s gone on all these years fairly worshiping Emmett’s memory for being such a hero.”
Uncle Darcy stopped suddenly and seemed to be drawn far away from them as if he had gone inside of himself with his own thoughts and forgotten their presence. Georgina sat and fanned herself with her shade hat. Richard fumbled with the little compass, rolling it from one hand to the other, without giving any thought to what he was doing. Presently it rolled away from him and Captain Kidd darted after it, striking it with his forepaws as he landed on it, and thus rolling it still farther till it stopped at the old man’s feet.
Recalled to his surroundings in this way, Uncle Darcy glanced at the object indifferently, but something strangely familiar in its appearance made him lean closer and give it another look. He picked it up, examining it eagerly. Then he stood up and gazed all around as if it had dropped from the sky and he expected to see the hand that had dropped it.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded huskily, in such a queer, breathless way that Richard thought his day of reckoning had come. His sin had found him out. He looked at Georgina helplessly.
“Yes, tell!” she exclaimed, answering his look.
“I--I--just _played_ it was mine,” he began. “’Cause the initials on it are the same as mine when we play pirate and I’m Dare-devil Dick. I was only going to keep it till we dug up the pouch again. We were keeping it to help find the pouch like Tom Sawyer did--”