"Sit still there until I get a light. I want to have a look at you," said Uncle Thatcher, rising.
"No, no, dad. Don't get a light, or—wait a bit. I'll fix it."
Silas quickly stripped of its blankets a spare bed that stood in the room and carefully hung them up over the window upon the shade-roller, so as to prevent any ray of light straggling through to the outside. His father waited patiently until this preparation was complete and then went to the kitchen, whence he returned in a few moments with a lighted candle.
"Silas, you've been lying to me," was his first exclamation at sight of his son.
"Well, what do you want to ask a feller so many questions for?" was the scapegrace's dogged reply.
"You have, you young scoundrel. Your face isn't that of an honest working-man, and your hands—let me see them! Yes, as I expected. Honest toil makes hands hard, and rough, and big, as mine are. Yours are not so. Now tell me the truth about what you've been doing, and what you are up to now—if you can tell the truth—or I'll break your back, you scamp."
"Well. There's no use a-makin' a fuss about it. I was at work. Not at ship-carpentering, but at tending bar. I couldn't get anything else to do. And I got into a little bit of trouble. That's all."
"'That's all,' eh? What sort of trouble?"
Silas hesitated; the old man, as he well knew by experience, was almost certain to look through his most adroitly constructed lies, and he did not dare to tell the truth.
"I didn't do nothin'," said he at length, sullenly. "It was some of the rest of the boys, and I was mixed up with them, as they were friends of mine—and—I was afraid of being arrested—by mistake. That's all."