"And now, boy," he said, "I'll have no more nonsense from you--so understand me, once and for all. It's an unwise thing to pry into my affairs--I can tell you that. You know more about me already than I care to think; and I tell you fairly, you had best mend your ways, if you value life."
I was afraid of the look of him, of the hard glitter in his eyes and the way in which his thin lips were tightly pressed together. And I was more afraid still of what would happen when he discovered that I had made away with my fragment of the torn map. My heart was in my mouth. I felt as if I were suspended by a thread upon the brink of a precipice, and that at any moment that thread would break and I be hurled into eternity.
Fortunately, perhaps, I was not left long in such uncertainty; for no sooner had Amos taken his hands from off my shoulders than he clapped them together behind his back, and came out with the very question that I feared.
"And where's the map, my boy?" said he.
I answered nothing.
"Give it up," he demanded, and held out a hand.
"I have not got it," said I.
At that his jaw dropped. He stared at me in amazement, not knowing whether or not to believe me.
"Haven't got it!" he repeated. "What d'ye mean?"
And the way he rapped out those last few words made my blood run cold. I saw, however, that I must make a clean breast of the matter, let it end which way it would.