“He has done all that, Mr. Prescott, and he is a damned scoundrel. By Gad, sir,” the old man said, furiously, “I am an old man, but if I wasn’t his uncle I’d horsewhip him in the public streets—I’d put a bullet in his body—I’d, by Gad, sir, I’d have him flayed alive.”
“Indeed, he must be a great rascal, Captain Bradshaw; I never liked him; I always distrusted him, but I never gave him credit for such villainy as this.”
For some time longer they talked the matter over, and Prescott soothed the old man’s self-condemnation, by assuring him that he did not see that, under the circumstances, he could have doubted Frank’s guilt.
“But you ought to have seen him, sir; you ought at least to have given him an opportunity of defence.”
“So I ought, Mr. Prescott; but Frank was a little—just a little—to blame, too. He knew how I loved him, and he ought to have conquered his pride, and to have insisted upon knowing precisely what he was charged with. Ah! if he had but answered my letter, and demanded an explanation, all this misery and mistake might have been avoided.”
“But you seem to forget, Captain Bradshaw, that Frank did answer the letter, and that you returned it unopened, without a word of explanation.”
“Returned his letter, Mr. Prescott!—returned his letter unopened! You are labouring under some mistake. Frank never sent me a single line; so it was impossible I could have returned it.”
“I can only say, Mr. Bradshaw, that I know, from my positive knowledge, that Frank did write, because although I was away at the time, when he told me about it, he went to his desk and took out the letter and indignantly threw it upon the table, and said—‘There, Prescott, there is my only answer, my own letter returned unopened.’”
Captain Bradshaw sat stupefied; he could not doubt what Prescott said. After a pause he rose, without a word, and knocked at the door of Alice Heathcote’s bedroom, which communicated with the sitting-room:
“Alice, please come here.”