"It was Flagg, then," he persisted.
The color flashed up over Charlie's pale face, but he only answered sharply:
"I tell you to let me alone. You're real mean, Seabrooke."
"So he is," said Mrs. Moffat, "and I wish the doctor would come. We'd see if he'd have this sick boy put about this way, Mr. Seabrooke. I tell you I have the care of him now, and I'll not have him plagued this way."
But Seabrooke was gone before she was half through with this speech, and poor Charlie was left to take his coffee in such peace as he might with the dread hanging over him of being reported as a tell-tale. Mrs. Moffat's sympathy and her almost abuse of Seabrooke did him little good; he was very sensitive to praise or blame, and could not bear the thought of incurring the ill-will of any one of the boys.
CHAPTER XIII.
ACCUSATION.
Quiet and self-contained and little given to impulse as he was, Seabrooke, when roused to anger or resentment, was a very lion in his wrath, and there was one thing which he could never tolerate or overlook, and that was any attempt to take an unfair advantage of him. He had been exasperated to a great degree by Flagg's endeavor to drug him on the night of the expedition to Rice's, and that with good reason; and now his suspicions, nay, more than suspicions aroused that he was trying to make it appear that he, Seabrooke, had wrongfully kept Percy's money and then pretended that the latter had taken it from him by stealth, enraged him beyond bounds.
Striding in among the group of boys who were still discussing the very question of the disappearance of the money which had been the main topic of interest ever since the loss was discovered, the bank-note in his hand, he advanced directly to Flagg, who was taking an active part in the conversation—that is, he had been doing so within the last few moments, since he had returned after a short absence from the school-room, looking, as more than one of the boys observed, "flushed and rather flurried."
Indeed one boy had remarked: