“Make him settle for the damage.”
“If he refuses—what then?”
“His father’ll have a chance to settle. Somebody must pay for last night’s work.”
Then they followed Don into the church.
To the doctor’s son it seemed that the sermon was aimed directly at him, and all through the discourse he sat with his cheeks alternately flushing and paling, looking neither to the right nor left. The text, taken from Revelations, was a body blow, causing the uncomfortable boy to start when it fell on his ears: “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” The preacher was relentless in his denunciation of hypocrites and liars, so that Don was relieved to escape from the church when it was all over.
When he found himself alone at home, he sought to salve his wounded conscience and palliate his deception of his father by declaring to himself that he was not to blame for a falsehood that had been forced from him by such a combination of circumstances, and which he had told in order to avert the pain and distress which the truth might bring upon the doctor. The blame for this act he sought to shift upon his enemy, who had driven him into such a strait.
Not that Don had never before perpetrated a deception or uttered anything savoring of untruth, for, like the average boy, he was not perfect in this respect, but, up to this time, his intercourse with his father, whom he held in such deep affection, had been absolutely honest and truthful, for which reason the falsehood was like a poisoned arrow rankling in a wound.
“But I’ve got to keep it up, now that I’ve commenced it,” he told himself.
And thus it was that the first false step led to others, as almost unfailingly happens.
That afternoon Don sought to forget his troubles by reading, and for the purpose he resorted to one of Trowbridge’s most thrilling books, “Cudjo’s Cave.” Absorbed by the breathless flight of Penn, Virginia and Cudjo through the burning forest, he failed for some time to hear the whistled signal that came from beneath his window or the tiny pebbles that clinked against the panes.