The scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim books in their walnut cases. And my father sat, like a judge, behind the big desk where he did his work when at home. Oh, the distance between us at such an hour! I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in his eye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth.
“Hugh,” he said, “your mother tells me that you have confessed to going, without permission, to Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft and fell into the water.”
The slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a colder shiver down my spine than the iced water had done. What did he know? or was this mere suspicion? Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty.
“It was a sort of a raft, sir,” I stammered.
“A sort of a raft,” repeated my father. “Where, may I ask, did you find it?”
“Ah!” said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at the jury.) The prisoner gulped. “You didn't exactly find it, then. Will you kindly explain how you came by it?”
“Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you made it?”
“No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it.”
“Or that it was intended for a row-boat?”
Here was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted a row-boat.
“Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir,” I said abjectly.
“Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbidding you to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a whim, you constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of the back partition, thus destroying property that did, not belong to you, and had the boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?” I was silent, utterly undone. Evidently he had specific information.... There are certain expressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of speech, and now my father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added visibly to his stature.
“Hugh,” he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of my soul, “I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son of mine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness and honour--can be a liar.” (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!) “Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for it before. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instil into you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess that I am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever, no conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not only persistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for many months, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you were secretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where this determination of yours to have what you desire at any price will lead you in the future. It is just such a desire that distinguishes wicked men from good.”