“Nephew,” he said, “I would our conversation could have been conducted with proper privacy. Oliver, oblige me by withdrawing to the door.”
“I heard you, sir! And you have never heard me ere this night. By God, sir, you should have taught me by now to be ashamed at nothing; yet—yet—to know the part that you have played this night,—you to have raised these rogues against my cousin and the old man there!”
My uncle smiling, though his brow grew black, cried out, “If I’d my cane, sir, I’d discipline you now. Are you drunk yet from dinner? Or do you think to win your cousin’s patronage at my expense? You think him heir to Craike and all my father had. I having nothing, you range yourself beside him!”
“I am ashamed,” said Oliver, regarding him with dark and lowering look. “By God, sir, I’ve been silent long enough. I’ll endure no more. Now this I’ll say to my cousin—if he’ll believe me; if he’ll think I have no motive but to be his friend, and save my father from fresh roguery and shame—I stand beside him.”
“When the door goes down, my good fellow, as presently it will,” my uncle sneered, “they’ll have your life and his.”
Oliver stretched out his hand to me; I gripped it; side by side we faced my uncle.
He said, “I have no time to bandy words with you, my son. I say this to you, John, that the Barwise sons are pledged to me, and will obey me, and Blunt’s men also will obey me! It is my condition only that you tell me where my father’s hoard is hid; for clearly he revealed it to you while you were with him; and that the agreement between us be, that we shall share this treasure. It’s hid in the house,—I assume in this very room.”
“And you assume,” I said, “my grandfather revealed it to me. You assume too much, sir.”
“Dear lad, your very face reveals your knowledge to me. Come, write, sign—there are pens and paper in the press there!”
“I answer this,” I said; “whatever come or have come to me from my grandfather, you shall not share. You would have had me kidnapped and shipped out of England. You have ever been an enemy to mine and me. What of my father?”
“Nephew,” he said, “hark to the pack outside the door!”
He rose; his look surveyed the room—the hangings were waving in the draught. He pointed suddenly to the tapestry drawn yet a little aside from the sliding panel; and at my start and confusion he laughed triumphantly, and strode forward. I lost my head; I sought to interpose; he thrust me from him, and rushing to the wall drew back the hangings. All this while the rogues without battered upon the door; I heard it groan and split, and knew that it was going down before their blows.