This did not satisfy Charley, and he took to his last expedient.
When a renowned general becomes entangled in a snare which he himself has spread; when he is caricatured and lampooned in all the newspapers, and without a friend in all the world, he makes an impassioned and well-punctuated declamation in his defence, in which he sums up the difficulties that lay in his way so eloquently; sets forth the rightfulness of his cause so manfully; represents the disinterestedness of his actions so carefully; discourses on the purity of his designs so volubly; harrows up the feelings of the audience, and the disguised editors so subtly; exposes the fallacies under which his defamers labor so jocosely; and reiterates his asservations so persistingly, that all except the most malevolent and perverse are brought to coincide with his views.
Charles was now “on his defence.”
“‘The end justifies the means,’ you know. Now,—”
“That’s what the Jesuits profess, and they are—” George interrupted. But, not knowing exactly what the Jesuits are, he stopped short, and Charley went on without further interruption.
“Now, that Tim was a rascal, but this will reclaim him. He has been cheating his mother on a small scale for more than a year. She has sent him to all the different stores for her groceries, but with the same results. He is the only one she has to send, and he has a chance to steal at his leisure. Now, if I had informed her that her son does the cheating, what would have become of me? Ten to one, she would have called me a sneaking talebearer, and told me to march off home and get my father to belabor me. As it is, Tim will probably get the drubbing. There now, wasn’t my ‘confession’ plan just the thing? Of course it was. You boys must be blind, or crazy, or silly.”
No oratory here, gentle reader. But the speaker was only a boy; if he had been older and more experienced, he would not have omitted to remark, incidentally, that he had acted “on the impulse of the moment.”
However, his reasoning, especially the latter part of it, was conclusive. “Quite right;” said all the boys. Then, as time is very precious to a schoolboy during the holidays, Stephen added, “Now let us go on; we’ve fooled away too much time doing nothing.”
Will and Charles taking the lead, the explorers advanced deeper into the woods; and taking an obscure pathway, soon found themselves in a quarter scarcely known to some of the boys. Heaps of brush-wood blocked up the way, making their progress very slow. But this only exhilarated their adventurous spirit; and they tore through the brush with smiling contempt for sundry bruises and scratches.
All except George, whose mind was still exercised about Charley’s “vice,” and who took no interest in squeezing through underwood, and stumbling over heaps of loose and rough brush-wood.