"Well, never mind, Jim," he said. "You needn't tell if you don't want to."
He would have to let Nancy coax it out of him. But he was puzzled, impressed with a sense of mystery and with a growing conviction that the boy was shielding some one else. He began to talk cheerfully of other things, hoping that Jim might perhaps drop a useful hint, or, at least, that the boy would gain confidence in him as a friend. By chance he asked:—
"Where did you get the knife, Jim?"
"Mr. Peaslee gave it to me."
"Peaslee!" exclaimed Farnsworth. He well knew the "closeness" of his fellow juror.
"It isn't much of a knife," said Jim, apologetic but pleased. Jim's views of the world were changing: his father, although a bandit chief, had let him go to jail, while this stingy old man, with no halo of adventure about him, gave him a knife; and here were Miss Ware and Mr. Farnsworth and Mrs. Calkins and the jailer, none of them smugglers, who were very kind.
Farnsworth rose to go. Then Jim, summoning all his courage, asked a question which had long been trembling on his lips.
"What do they do to smugglers, Mr. Farnsworth?"
"Fine 'em, or put 'em in jail, or both. Why?"
"Nothing much," said Jim, but obviously he was cast down.