“Do I look like a thief?” asked Mr. Millweed, rising from his seat in the standing-room in deep disgust; though he was immediately thrown back again by the motion of the yacht.
“Never mind how you look: you acted just like a thief,” retorted Dory warmly. “You don’t say yet that you didn’t take the money when you went to the safe for the book.”
“I do say now, most emphatically, that I did
not take the money when I went to the safe for the cash-book, or at any other time. I didn’t even know there was any money in the safe,” protested Mr. Millweed very earnestly.
“That’s coming to the point; but you have done the best you could to convince your employer and his head man that you did take it. I advise you to go straight back to Burlington, and then straight to the store, and face the music. If anybody says I stole any money, I want to see the man that says so.”
“That would all be very well under ordinary circumstances,” pleaded Mr. Millweed.
“It’s all very well under any circumstances.”
“I had a theory of my own.”
“I don’t care any thing about your theory: I say the way is to face the music. If you had let them search you before you went out of the store, you would have been all right. They would not have found the money upon you, and you had had no chance to get rid of it. Now they will say you buried it somewhere on the shore of the lake.”
“But I tell you I have a theory. I believe Tim Lingerwell took the money himself. How easy it