xcitement.

"It was not a pleasant thing to tell."

"No, but it is not pleasanter to hear it now. There is less chance that
the guilty person may be traced now, than if the loss had been declared
at once. And must I lie under the suspicion always? I do not think you
have been just to me."

"That will do. The less said the better," said Mr Oswald. "Frank, you
must go home."

"You will not go away, Davie?" said Frank.

"Not if I may stay. Where could I go?" said David.

"You will stay, of course. Let us hope the truth about this unpleasant
business may come out at last. We must all be uncomfortable until it
does."

"If you had only spoken to David about it sooner," said Frank, again.

But Mr Oswald would neither say nor hear more. Entreated by Frank,
however, he asked David to go and stay at his house, till his mother
returned home. But David refused to go even for a day, and no
entreaties of Frank could move him.

"I don't wonder that you will not come," said Frank. "I don't blame you
for refusing. And oh! what will Aunt Mary think of us all?"

"She will know that _you_ are all right, Frank," said David, trying to
look cheerful as he bade his friend good-bye at the door. He did not
succeed very well, nor did Frank; and David, thinking of it afterwards,
was by no means sure that he had been right in refusing to go to stay
with him for a while, and thinking of his friend's troubles did him some
good, in that it gave him less time to think of his own. But he could
not make up his mind to go to Mr Oswald's house, and he did not see
Frank again for a good while after that.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

David had rather a hard time for the next few days. A great trouble had
fallen on him. He could have borne anything else better he sometimes
thought. His good name was in danger, for even a false accusation must
leave a stain on it, he thought. Every day that passed made it less
likely that the mysterious matter of the lost money could be cleared up,
and until this happened, Mr Oswald would never perfectly trust him
again; and David said to himself, sometimes sadly and sometimes angrily,
that he could not stay where he was not trusted. Nor was it likely that
Mr Oswald would wish him to stay. They might have to leave the bridge
house and Singleton, and where could they go?

Of course a constant indulgence in such thoughts and fears was very
foolish on David's part, and almost always he knew it to be