“No,” returned Zack. “I never met with a man of that name. Is he a friend of yours?”
Mat went on scouring the rifle barrel.
Young Thorpe said nothing more. He had been a little puzzled early in the evening, when his friend had exhibited the fan and tobacco pouch (neither of which had been produced before), and had mentioned to Mr. Blyth that they were once intended for “a woman” who was now dead. Zack had thought this conduct rather odd at the time; but now, when it was followed by these strangely abrupt references to the name of Carr, by this mysterious scouring of the rifle and desperate brandy drinking in solitude, he began to feel perplexed in the last degree about Mat’s behavior. “Is this about Arthur Carr a secret of the old boy’s?” Zack asked himself with a sort of bewildered curiosity. “Is he letting out more than he ought, I wonder, now he’s a little in liquor?”
While young Thorpe was pondering thus, Mat was still industriously scouring the barrel of his rifle. After the silence in the room had lasted some minutes, he suddenly threw away his morsel of sand-paper, and spoke again.
“Zack,” he said, familiarly smacking the stock of his rifle, “me and you had some talk once about going away to the wild country over the waters together. I’m ready to sail when you are, if—” He had glanced up at young Thorpe with his vacant bloodshot eyes, as he spoke the last words. But he checked himself almost at the same moment, and looked away again quickly at the gun.
“If what?” asked Zack.
“If I can lay my hands first on Arthur Carr,” answered Mat, with very unusual lowness of tone. “Only let me do that, and I shall be game to tramp it at an hour’s notice. He may be dead and buried for anything I know—”
“Then what’s the use of looking after him?” interposed Zack.
“The use is, I’ve got it into my head that he’s alive, and that I shall find him,” returned Mat.
“‘Well?” said young Thorpe eagerly.