Billy looked at Tom, and Tom looked at Billy. Bad as Tom felt, Billy felt three times worse. Billy had three things on his mind: first of all, he mustn’t tell a lie; then, he must keep the secret; and, if Tom Murphy stayed by that door, the man wouldn’t bring back the key.
Billy and William Wallace both thought as fast as they could. Billy got hold of an idea first. Perhaps by asking Tom a question he could throw him off the track, and could keep from telling a lie.
So he said: “Had you made up your mind, Mr. Murphy, when it would be best to tell him?”
“No, William,” answered Tom Murphy, in a hopeless tone, “I hadn’t. I’ve turned that thing over and over in my mind, and I’ve turned it inside out; and all the answer that I can get to it is that there’ll be no Tom Murphy any more a-keepin’ time at Prescott mill.”
“But you didn’t lose the key, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, very sympathetically, now that his first danger was over.
“That I didn’t,” said Tom Murphy. “It’s been a rule and a regulation that that key was to stay in that door from morning to night. That key ought not to have been left in that door.”
“No,” said Billy, “excepting that everybody knows how much Mr. Prescott thinks of that key.”
“That’s just it,” said Thomas Murphy, pulling his old chair out from behind the door, and sinking into it with a sigh of relief.
“What would you,” he asked as he stretched out his lame leg, and clasped his hands across his chest, “what would you advise, as a friend? Don’t leave me, William,” he exclaimed, as Billy stepped outside.
“I won’t,” said Billy, stepping forward far enough to see the clock.