“No, I thank you, Mr Caldwell, I would rather not.”
“It will be dreary work staying here with your sore and angry heart. You need not be alone, however. You don’t need me to tell you where you are to take all this trouble to. You may honour Him by bearing it well,” said his friend.
“Bear it well!” No, he did not do that; at least, he did not at first.
When Mr Caldwell had gone, and David had shut the doors and windows to keep out the rain that was beginning to fall, the tears, which he had kept back with difficulty when his friend was there, gushed out in a flood. And they were not the kind of tears that relieve and refresh. There was anger in them, and a sense of shame made them hot and bitter as they fell. He had wild thoughts of going that very night to Mr Oswald to answer his terrible question, and to tell him that he would never enter his office again; for, even to be questioned and suspected, seemed, to him, to bring dishonour, and his sense of justice made him eager to defend himself at whatever cost. But night brought wiser counsels; and David knew, as Mr Caldwell had said, where to betake himself with his trouble; and the morning found him in quite another mind.
As for Mr Caldwell, he did not wait till morning to carry his answer to Mr Oswald. He did not even go home first to his own house, though he had not been there for a fortnight.
“For who knows,” said he to himself, “what that foolish lad may go and say in his anger, and Mr Oswald must hear what I have to say first, or it may end badly for all concerned.”
He found Mr Oswald sitting in the dining-room alone, and, after a few words concerning the business which had called him away during the last few weeks, he told him of his visit to David, and spoke with decision as to the impossibility of the lad’s having any knowledge of the lost money.
“It seems impossible, certainly,” said Mr Oswald; “and yet how can its disappearance be accounted for? It must have been taken from the table or from the safe on the very day it was brought to me, or I must have seen it at night. There can be no doubt it was brought to me on that day, and there can be no doubt it was after all the others, except young Inglis and yourself were gone. I was out, I remember, when it was time to go home. When I came in, there was no one in the outer office. You had sent David out, you said. He came in before I left—” And he went over the whole affair again, saying it was not the loss of the money that vexed him. Though the loss had been ten times as great, it would have been nothing in comparison with the vexation caused by the loss of confidence in those whom he employed.
“For some one must have taken the money, even if David Inglis be not guilty.”
Here they were both startled by a voice from the other end of the room.