"Look here, Craven, you must make up your mind to do something for me. Give me a thousand dollars down."
"I couldn't without my wife finding out. Besides you would be coming back for more."
"Well, perhaps I might," said the other, coolly.
"You would ruin me," exclaimed Craven, sullenly. "Do you think I am made of money?"
"I know this--that it will be better for you to share your prosperity with me, and so insure not being disturbed. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
Mr. Craven fixed his eyes upon the table, seriously disturbed.
"How much is the boy worth?" asked Sharpley, after a pause.
"Forty thousand dollars!" exclaimed Sharpley, his eyes sparkling with greed. "That's splendid."
"For him, yes. It doesn't do me any good."
"Didn't you say, that in the event of his death the money would go to your wife?"
"So may we. That's more likely. He's a stout boy, as you must have observed, since you have met him."
"Life is uncertain. Suppose he should have a fever, or meet with an accident."
"My dear Craven," said Sharpley, drawing his chair nearer that of his brother-in-law, "it strikes me that you are slightly obtuse, and you a lawyer, too. Fie upon you! My meaning is plain enough, it strikes me."
"What do you mean?" inquired Craven, coloring, and shifting uneasily in his chair. "You wouldn't have me murder him, would you?"
"Don't name such a thing. I only mean, that if we got a good opportunity to expose him to some sickness, and he happened to die of it, it would be money in our pockets."
Craven looked startled, and his sallow face betrayed by its pallor his inward disturbance.
"That is absurd," he said. "There is no chance of that here. If the boy should die I shouldn't mourn much, but he may live to eighty. There's not much chance of any pestilence reaching this town."
"Perhaps so," said the other, shrugging his shoulders, "but then this little village isn't the whole world."
"You seem to have some plan to propose," said Mr. Craven, eagerly. "What is it?"
"I propose," said Sharpley, "that you send the boy to Europe with me."
"Yes; on a traveling tour, for his education, improvement, anything. Only send him under my paternal care, and--possibly he might never come back."
Mr. Craven was not a scrupulous man, and this proposal didn't shock him as it should have done, but he was a timid man, and he could not suppress a tremor of alarm.