Alick stared through the window out to sea, with an equally woebegone face with that of his companion in misery. Two more unhappy boys one could not have well beheld. And this grievous state of affairs had revengefully trodden on the heels of the delightfully fascinating expedition to the woods, which had been forbidden to the one boy, and which the other boy had shirked his duty to join in!
'What would be the end of it all?' Alick dully asked himself.
'Ned,' he said aloud, and there was a passionate ring of regret in his voice, 'it wasn't worth it!'
'No, muster, it warn't!' assented Ned, fully understanding that Alick would have given his right hand to have put back the clock of time, that he might again have the chance of apologising as Geoff had done, and returning to his duty in the schoolroom. Both boys felt positively assured that had they been on the spot the catastrophe could not possibly have occurred.
There was a spell of silence in the tea-house. Now and again the echo of a sob shook Ned from head to foot. Alick leaned his forehead against the window jamb, and stared sullenly at the leaping waves below. As he gazed, a strange resolve came into the boy's mind, born of the deepening despair consuming him.
In the black gloom that environed him, came Satan's opportunity.
'You will never be forgiven if Theo dies,' whispered the tempting voice. 'Perhaps you also will be put in prison, who knows, with Ned as an accomplice!' Alick Carnegy, it will be seen, had but confused notions as to what manslaughter meant. He shivered and cowered at the terrifying notions of being shut up for life, perhaps, in some gloomy gaol. Better-informed boys may jeer at Alick's ignorance of things in general, but Northbourne was an out-of-the-way, stand-still spot, with few or no opportunities of smartening the wits, of keeping up with the times.
'The best way out of the difficulty would be to run away, wouldn't it?' as he brooded, somebody seemed to suddenly and swiftly whisper in his ear. And Alick, when the sense of the suggestion penetrated his mind, abruptly lifted his hanging head. He gasped aloud in relief. A door of escape opened in the black, impenetrable wall that was closing in round him.
'Ned,' he said softly, nudging the other boy, 'listen to me! Be done with that cry-baby business! We two, you and I, have got ourselves into an awful scrape, and there's only one thing for us. Can't you guess what that is? Rouse up! Can't you guess?' he repeated impatiently.
'Me guess? No! I can't make Miss Theedory get well; and what else matters?' Ned lifted a tear-stained face to say brokenly.