Part 85 (2/2)
”Yes, uncle, I'm afraid so But you will let him off? Perhaps he'll repent and send the papers back”
”The same way as foxes do with the far
”Uncle, it is too serious to laugh at,” cried Tonantly ”Sam Brandon is your own nephew”
”Yes, Tom, and all you say is in vain I have punished him severely for a cruel, cowardly robbery”
”But you'll do no more, uncle?” cried Tom ”Humph! Well, no, I think I may say that I shall do no ain”
”Ah, I don't mind that, uncle,” cried Tom anxiously ”But tell me-- hohat you have done I would not speak to anybody, and kept it all so quiet till you came, uncle, because of that You--you haven't put it in the hands of the police?”
”How could I,of the robbery until you told ?”
”But you said you had punished him, uncle”
”So I have--cruelly”
”I don't understand you,” said Tom, with his brow puckered-up, and so back into his mind
”I suppose not, Tom; but I have punished your cousin all the same-- unconsciously of course”
”I wish you'd tell me what you mean, uncle,” said Tom, with his face one mass of puckers and wrinkles
”I will, To the law to bear on h on your account I should have taken pretty stern measures to enforce restitution of any papers that had been stolen; but I have, without knowing it, allowed your cousin alone, or perhaps incited, to coet those deeds back into his or his father's possession”
”Oh, uncle! you don't think--”
”Silence I don't want to think or surmise, Tom I only want for you and me to be left alone to our own devices, and you keep interrupting esture
”Unconsciously, I say, I have punished your cousin, for he came down here and stole some worthless papers”
”No, uncle,” said Toone”
”Yes, hts I felt that it was my duty to place them in a safe depository, and I took them up to London when I went, and saw them locked up in the deed-box with -room at my lawyer's, where they are out of every would-be scoundrel's reach”
”Uncle!” cried Tolad”
”That the papers are safe?”
”Bother the old papers!” cried Tom; ”that you have punished him like that”
Then the lad burst into a fit of peculiar laughter, and became calm the moment after