"Don't say a word!" he exclaimed. "Nobody knows about that fox bed. If we keep still, it will never come out."
Addison and I both felt that such secrecy would leave us with a mighty mean feeling in our hearts; but Willis begged us never to say a word about it to any one. He was as penitent as we were, I think; but the thought that he might have to go to jail filled him with panic.
We went home in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, without having reached any decision.
"We've got to square this somehow," Addison said. "If I had the money, I'd settle for the colts and say nothing more to Willis about it."
"Money wouldn't make Mrs. Kennard feel much better," I said.
"That's so; but we might find a pretty sorrel colt somewhere, and make her a present of it in place, of Sylph—if we only had the money."
If it had not been for Willis, I rather think that we should have gone to the old Squire that very evening and told him the whole story; but the legal consequences of the affair troubled us, and since they affected Willis more than they affected us we did not like to say anything.
Week after week went by without our being able to bring ourselves to confess. The concealment was a source of daily uneasiness to us; although we rarely spoke of the affair to each other, it was always on our minds. Whenever we did speak of it together, Addison would say, "We've got to straighten that out," or, "I hate to have that colt scrape hanging on us in this way." We tried several times to get Willis's consent to our telling the old Squire; but he had brooded over the thing so long that he had convinced himself that if his act became known he would surely be sent to the penitentiary.
So there the matter lay covered up all summer until one afternoon in September, when the old Squire drove to the village to contract for his apple barrels, and I went with him to get a pair of boots. Just as we were starting for home we met Mrs. Kennard. Previously she had often visited us at the farm, but since the death of Sylph she had not come near us. The old Squire tried to-day to be more cordial than ever, but Mrs. Kennard answered him rather coldly. She started on, but turned suddenly and asked whether we had learned anything more about the death of those colts.
"And, oh, do you think that poor Sylph lay there, suffering, a long time?" she exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. "I keep thinking of it."