“Explain yourself, if you please. I don’t understand.”
“Well, if we will only say the word, the smugglers will quickly put him out of the way, and the money is ours.”
“What then is to become of my honorable name that you have harped upon so much?” demanded Ralph, with a sneer.
His uncle winced beneath this quick retort, but replied confidently:
“Why, you foolish boy, don’t you see that will be easy enough then. You will have no one to dispute your claim but that puling boy, and what can he do, with no proofs, against such incontestable ones as you have?”
“Then you mean for us to cage up the father for life, get possession of the property, and let my young rival go, and work or beg for his living?” Ralph said, in a manner which gave his uncle some encouragement to reveal the whole of his plan.
“That is just what I mean, with one or two important alterations, which I will name,” he replied, jocosely. “I propose to cage him, as you call it, but not like his son, but rather in a wooden box, and six feet below ground, and then let the young man go to Jericho if he wants to.”
“In other words, you would murder the man,” said Ralph, in a husky voice, with a pale face and stern brow.
“You’ve hit it right this time, my boy!” he answered, with a wicked leer. “And now what do you think of it?”
Ralph involuntarily shuddered at such bold, out-spoken treachery, and he replied in a voice of intense loathing and horror: