“No, no,” cried Dick passionately. “I want to be good friends, but I cannot speak to you. I don’t know anything for certain, I only suspect.”
“Then whom do you suspect?”
“Yes; who is it?” cried Tom angrily.
“Hold your tongue!” said Dick so fiercely that Tom shrank away.
“I say you shall speak out,” retorted the lad, recovering himself.
“For your father’s sake speak out, my lad,” said Mr Marston.
Dick shook his head and turned away, to go back into the wheelwright’s cottage, where, suffering from a pain and anguish of mind to which he had before been a stranger, he sought refuge at his mother’s side, and shared her toil of watching his father as he lay there between life and death.