" He
stooped over the trunk, lifted the lid, and taking something from his
pocket, thrust it down beneath the contents, hastily closed it again,
and darted from the room. The whole performance took but a moment,
but there was an unmistakable air of guilt and terror about Lewis
which did not fail to make itself apparent even to the inexperienced
eye of Charlie.
[Illustration: AN UNSUSPECTING WITNESS]
"I wonder what he was doing. He hates Seabrooke; so he wasn't giving
him a pleasant surprise," said the little boy to himself. "He's a
sneak, and I suspect he was doing something sneaky. I've a great mind
to tell Seabrooke to look in his trunk before he locks it. Perhaps he
has put in something to explode or do some harm to the things in
Seabrook's trunk or to himself."
Charlie was a nervous child and rather imaginative, and was always
conjuring up possibilities of disaster in his own mind. He did not
make these public; he knew better than to do such a thing in a house
full of schoolboys, but they existed all the same. He did not wish to
"tell tales;" but he had not too much confidence in Lewis Flagg--it
would be hard to find the boy in the school who had, especially among
the younger ones--and he could not bear to think that he might have
planned some scurvy trick on Seabrooke.
Charlie was a pattern scholar, a boy after Seabrooke's own heart,
because of his sincere efforts to do right; and hence he had found
favor in his eyes, and he had shown many little tokens of partiality
toward the child which had won for him the younger boy's gratitude
and affection.
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