confute it.

"Why worrit yourself about finding Arthur Carr at all?" pursued Mrs.
Peckover, noticing his perplexed and mortified expression. "The wretch
is dead, most likely, by this time--"

"I'm not dead!" retorted Mat, fiercely; "and you're not dead; and you
and me are as old as him. Don't tell me he's dead again! I say he's
alive; and, by God, I'll be even with him!"

"Oh, don't talk so, don't! It's shocking to hear you and see you," said
Mrs. Peckover, recoiling from the expression of his eye at that moment,
just as she had recoiled from it already over Mary's grave. "Suppose he
is alive, why should you go taking vengeance into your own hands after
all these years? Your poor sister's happy in heaven; and her child's
took care of by the kindest people, I do believe, that ever drew breath
in this world. Why should you want to be even with him now? If he hasn't
been punished already, I'll answer for it he will be--in the next world,
if not in this. Don't talk about it, or think about it any more, that's
a good man! Let's be friendly and pleasant together again--like we were
just now--for Mary's sake. Tell me where you've been to all these years.
How is it you've never turned up before? Come! tell me, do."

She ended by speaking to him in much the same tone which she would have
made use of to soothe a fractious child. But her instinct as a woman
guided her truly: in venturing on that little reference to "Mary," she
had not ventured in vain. It quieted him, and turned aside the current
of his thoughts into the better and smoother direction. "Didn't she
never talk to you about having a brother as was away aboard ship?" he
asked, anxiously.

"No. She wouldn't say a word about any of her friends, and she didn't
say a word about you. But how did you come to be so long away?--that's
what I want to know," said Mrs. Peckover, pertinaciously repeating her
question, partly out of curiosity, partly out of the desire to keep him
from returning to the dangerous subject of Arthur Carr.

"I was alway a bitter bad 'un, _I_ was," said Matthew, meditatively.
"There was no keeping of me straight, try it anyhow you like. I bolted
from home, I bolted from school, I bolted from aboard ship--"

"Why? What for?"

"Partly because I was a bitter bad 'un, and partly because of a letter
I picked up in port, at the Brazils, at the end of a long cruise. Here's
the letter--but it's no good showing it to you: the paper's so grimed
and tore