Billy watched him with shrewd, hunted eyes. What did Charley mean to do? To give him in charge? To send him to jail? To shut him out from the world where he had enjoyed himself so much for years and years? Never to go forth free among his fellows! Never to play the gallant with all the pretty girls he knew! Never to have any sports, or games, or tobacco, or good meals, or canoeing in summer, or tobogganing in winter, or moose-hunting, or any sort of philandering!
The thoughts that filled his mind now were not those of regret for his crime, but the fears of the materialist and sentimentalist, who revolted at punishment and all the shame and deprivation it would involve.
“What did you do with the money?” said Charley, after a minute’s silence, in which two minds had travelled far.
“I put it into mines.”
“What mines?”
“Out on Lake Superior.”
“What sort of mines?”
“Arsenic.”
Charley’s eye-glass dropped, and rattled against the gold button of his white waistcoat.
“In arsenic-mines!” He put the monocle to his eye again. “On whose advice?”