This movement prevented me from hearing what followed immediately; but I hastened to my door, hoping to catch a word which would enable me to determine who the person was.
"The young villain has run away with Mrs. Loraine's step-daughter," I heard him say, as I opened the door wide enough to permit me to catch the sound. "I tell you, governor, you must get rid of the young vagabond, or he will swamp the whole of us."
"Hush! he will hear you," said uncle Amos.
"No matter. I have pounded away hard enough to wake the dead. If that didn't rouse him, nothing will," added the messenger, gruffly.
"Silence!"
"I have had about enough of this thing," continued the rough visitor. "You insist on keeping the whelp here, when you know he is a bombshell in your path and mine. Why don't you send him to sea, and let him get drowned?"
"Be still, Thomas," replied my uncle, in a whisper.
"I won't be still, governor. The vagabond has run away with that girl, and—"
They passed into the dining-room, and I could not hear the rest of the sentence. The visitor was Tom Thornton, for my uncle called him Thomas. I was a vagabond, and a bombshell in the path of both of them. Tom called my uncle "governor," and this indicated that he was his son. I half suspected this before, but it was news to me to learn that I was regarded as a dangerous young man. Why was I dangerous? I had not done anything to imperil the life or the fortunes of either of them.
My uncle would not tell me anything about my father, or my mother, save that the latter was insane and the inmate of an asylum. Now, Tom objected because I had not been sent to sea to be drowned! They were talking about me down stairs, and I slipped on my pants, and crept down the stairs. I found that they had entered my uncle's library, and the spring lock on the door had fastened it. I listened, but I could not distinguish what was said.