“You needn’t come any tragedy over me, old woman!” he answered with annoyance. “I left him on Egg Island to punish him for disobeying me!”
“I charge you with his murder!” she continued, confronting him with a courage quite new to her.
“Murder!” he repeated, starting. “Come, now, that’s a little too strong! Leaving him on Egg Island isn’t murdering him. You talk like a fool!”
“Trafton,” said Ben Bence gravely, “there is reason to think that your nephew put off from the island on a raft, which he made himself, and that the raft went to pieces.”
For the first time John Trafton’s brown face lost its color.
“You don’t mean to say Bob’s drowned?” he ejaculated.
“There is reason to fear that he may be.”
“I’ll bet he’s on the island now.”
“We have just been there and he is not there.”
At length Trafton began to see that the situation was a grave one, and he began to exculpate himself.