"Yes; you have probably seen him here sometimes."
"I haven't noticed him."
"I am feeling very anxious about him. Yesterday morning he went out on an errand for some one who had engaged him, and he hasn't been back since. I am afraid something must have happened to him," and the mother's eyes filled with tears.
"Perhaps he has fallen off from one of the wharves, and got drowned," suggested Peter, with a savage delight in the pain he was inflicting.
"You don't think it possible!" exclaimed Mrs. Codman, starting to her feet, and looking in the old man's face with a glance of agonized entreaty, as if he could change by his words the fate of her son.
"Such things often happen," said Peter, chuckling inwardly at the success of his remark; "I knew a boy—an Irish boy, about the size of yours—drowned the other day."
"About the size of my boy! I thought you had not noticed him."
"I—I remember having seen him once," stammered Peter. "He is about a dozen years old, isn't he?"
"Yes; but you don't—you can't think him drowned."
"How should I know?" muttered Peter. "Boys are careless, very careless, you know that; and like as not he might have been playing on the wharf, and——"