"Nothing particular; only I don't feel just right," replied the young midnight marauder, terribly alarmed as he thought of the probable consequences of this visitation.
"Well, open the door, and let me see what I can do for you," added his father.
"I don't want any thing done. I shall be well enough in the morning."
"You had better open the door, Richard; I want to see you about the robbers."
"I can't; I am in bed."
"Don't get up then," said Mr. Grant, more anxious than at first for the health of his son. "I have a key that will open the door."
These words struck terror to the soul of the guilty youth, and he sprang out of bed with all the haste he could command. One terror filled his mind—that his father might see his bleeding, lacerated limbs; and he did, what guilty persons often do, the stupidest thing of which the circumstances would admit. He had blown out the light when he heard them coming, and now in the darkness he pulled on his pants, forgetting that the bed clothes would as effectually hide his injured members as the garment.
He had hardly clothed himself in this partial manner before his father succeeded in opening the door. By the aid of the light which uncle Obed carried, the head and front of the melon expedition was revealed to the visitors, standing in the middle of the room, half clothed and wholly scared.
"Why, Richard! What ails you? Where have you been?" demanded Mr. Grant, as he and the others gazed with astonishment at the sorry figure which the male heir of Woodville presented.
If Richard had attempted to dress himself in the light, he would have rejected the muddy pants he now wore, and consigned them to the deepest depths of the clothes-press. He had rolled in the moist earth of the melon patch, while under the discipline of Mr. Batterman, till his clothes were plastered with mud. His face was begrimed with the rich black mould of the garden, through which the tears of anger and resentment he had shed, under the influence of their natural gravity, had furrowed passages down his checks.