"Is this about Arthur Carr a secret of the old boy's?" Zack
asked himself with a sort of bewildered curiosity. "Is he letting out
more than he ought, I wonder, now he's a little in liquor?"
While young Thorpe was pondering thus, Mat was still industriously
scouring the barrel of his rifle. After the silence in the room had
lasted some minutes, he suddenly threw away his morsel of sand-paper,
and spoke again.
"Zack," he said, familiarly smacking the stock of his rifle, "me and
you had some talk once about going away to the wild country over the
waters together. I'm ready to sail when you are, if--" He had glanced
up at young Thorpe with his vacant bloodshot eyes, as he spoke the last
words. But he checked himself almost at the same moment, and looked
away again quickly at the gun.
"If what?" asked Zack.
"If I can lay my hands first on Arthur Carr," answered Mat, with very
unusual lowness of tone. "Only let me do that, and I shall be game to
tramp it at an hour's notice. He may be dead and buried for anything I
know--"
"Then what's the use of looking after him?" interposed Zack.
"The use is, I've got it into my head that he's alive, and that I shall
find him," returned Mat.
"'Well?" said young Thorpe eagerly.
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