When Emile saw Old Bruden, he stepped back quickly, as if he were afraid of it. Then he suddenly exclaimed,—
“I know not’ing about zat gun! I never saw it before!”
“The tavern-keeper informs me,” continued Mr. Muller, “that no one but myself has occupied the room in which I found the gun since that young gentleman left it. He also asserts that this gun belongs to Mr. Godfrey Berkeley. He knows it very well. It has been in the neighborhood a long time. It is also, as you see, without a ramrod, which corresponds with young Berkeley’s story, as Mr. Harrison has just told it. But I measured the barrels with a stick, and I find it is loaded, although neither barrel went off, and these two caps were snapped,” and he slightly raised the hammers, and showed the two split percussion-caps. “I can swear,” he added, “that this is the condition in which I found it.”
“I think,” said Mr. Welford, who had carefully attended to everything that was going on, “that without any reference to the mortgage proceedings or anything else, we should get out a warrant against this young man. It is due to him, as well as to all parties concerned, that the case should be investigated before a justice of the peace. You must not think that we are trying to intimidate you,” he continued, addressing Mr. Touron. “This matter, as I said before, has nothing to do with the other affair.”
So saying, he left the office, accompanied by Mr. Harrison and Alexander Muller, the latter carrying Old Bruden carefully under his arm.
Mr. Touron leaned back in his chair and thought over the matter. He was very much afraid that this charge against Emile could be proved. He had no confidence in his son’s word, and the matter was a very serious one.
Mr. Touron was a prudent man, and considered the subject carefully. In pressing the proceedings against Mr. Berkeley’s estate, he did not wish to recover the money which was due him. He only desired that the place might be sold by the sheriff that he might buy it. He already owned property in Boontown, and had long wished to possess Hyson Hall, which he intended to make his summer residence.
He knew that if he turned the Berkeleys out of it in the way he proposed, it would make him unpopular in the neighborhood for a time; but he supposed that this feeling would soon pass away, and he did not care much about it. But if, almost at the same time that Hyson Hall was sold by the sheriff, his son should be brought to trial here on a charge that might send him to the penitentiary, his unpopularity might be a very serious thing.
A jury selected from this vicinity would not be likely to deal gently with Emile. He thought it better, therefore, to wait awhile before pressing the foreclosure matter, and see how things would turn out. In six months, more interest would be due on the mortgage, and he felt quite certain that there would be no money to pay it. Godfrey Berkeley would not have run away if he had not been bankrupt, and it was not at all likely that there would be another steamboat for the boy to save. In six months he could get the property without any trouble.
He therefore arranged with Mr. Markle that the foreclosure business need not be pressed for the present, and left the office with his son, intending to quietly take the first train for New York; but before he reached the station Emile was arrested, and taken before a justice of the peace.