“And so have I, my lad. Now, though I am, as I may say, still in the king’s service, and I feel it my duty to go and inform the officers of what I have seen, on the other hand there is a horrible feeling of self-interest keeps tugging at me, and saying, ‘mind your own business. You are bad friends enough with Jonas Uggleston as it is, so let matters rest for your own sake and for your son’s.’”
“Oh, father!” I exclaimed.
“Then this feeling hints to me that I am not sure of anything, and that I have no business to interfere, and so on. Among other things it seems to whisper to me that old Jonas will not know, when all the time he must. Now come, Sep, as a thoughtful boy, what should you recommend me to do?”
“It’s very queer, father,” I said rather dolefully; “but how often one is obliged to do and say things one way, when it would be so easy and comfortable to do and say things the other way.”
“Yes, Sep,” he replied, turning away his face; “it is so all through life, and one is always finding that there is an easy way out of a difficulty. What should you do here?”
“What’s right, father,” I said boldly. “What’s right.”
He turned upon me in an instant, and grasped my hand with his eyes flashing, and he gripped me so hard that he hurt me.
As we stood looking in each other’s eyes, a strange feeling of misery came over me.
“What shall you do, father?” I said.
“I don’t quite know, Sep,” he replied thoughtfully. “I think I shall wait till Jonas Uggleston gets home, and then tell him all I have seen.”