“Yes, uncle,” cried Tom passionately, “but don’t make me speak. It is only a suspicion, and I may be wrong.”
“I’ll tell you if you are, Tom, my boy. You heard what I said—there must be perfect confidence between us two. When that ceases, which I think will never be, you and I will part.”
“But it seems so hard, so brutal to say such a thing when perhaps it is all imagination, and due perhaps to one’s not liking some one else.”
“True, Tom,” said Uncle Richard gravely; “but we must have out the truth. Come, I’ll help you, for I’m afraid I think as you do—you fancy it was your cousin Sam?”
Tom nodded quickly.
“Why?”
Tom tightened his lips as if saying, “I won’t speak,” but his uncle’s eyes were searching him, and in a slow, faltering way he said—
“I don’t think Pete Warboys would break in here to steal valuable papers, uncle.”
“No; it hardly seems likely, Tom. Go on.”
“And—and I thought—must I go on, uncle?”