‘It’s in my room,’ I answered, ‘I will go and fetch it.’
‘We will go together,’ he said.
I looked where I thought I had laid it, but there it was not. A pang of foreboding terror invaded me. Charley told me afterwards that I turned as white as a sheet. I looked everywhere, but in vain; ran and searched my uncle’s room, and then Charley’s, but still in vain; and at last, all at once, remembered with certainty that two nights before I had laid it on the window-sill in my uncle’s room. I shouted for Styles, but he was gone home with the mare, and I had to wait, in little short of agony, until he returned. The moment he entered I began to question him.
‘You took those books home, Styles?’ I said, as quietly as I could, anxious not to startle him, lest it should interfere with the just action of his memory.
‘Yes, sir. I took them at once, and gave them into Miss Pease’s own hands;—at least I suppose it was Miss Pease. She wasn’t a young lady, sir.’
‘All right, I dare say. How many were there of them?’
‘Six, sir.’
‘I told you five,’ I said, trembling with apprehension and wrath.
‘You said four or five, and I never thought but the six were to go. They were all together on the window-sill.’
I stood speechless. Charley took up the questioning.