n this or twenty other things,
but whatever it was, he did not scold so much as Ernest had expected,
and, seeing the boy look exhausted and believing him to be much grieved
at the loss of his watch, Theobald actually prescribed a glass of wine
after his dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but made him
see things more cheerfully than was usual with him.

That night when he said his prayers, he inserted a few paragraphs to the
effect that he might not be discovered, and that things might go well
with Ellen, but he was anxious and ill at ease. His guilty conscience
pointed out to him a score of weak places in his story, through any one
of which detection might even yet easily enter. Next day and for many
days afterwards he fled when no man was pursuing, and trembled each time
he heard his father's voice calling for him. He had already so many
causes of anxiety that he could stand little more, and in spite of all
his endeavours to look cheerful, even his mother could see that something
was preying upon his mind. Then the idea returned to her that, after
all, her son might not be innocent in the Ellen matter--and this was so
interesting that she felt bound to get as near the truth as she could.

"Come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy," she said to him one day
in her kindest manner; "come and sit down by me, and we will have a
little quiet confidential talk together, will we not?"

The boy went mechanically to the sofa. Whenever his mother wanted what
she called a confidential talk with him she always selected the sofa as
the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign. All mothers do
this; the sofa is to them what the dining-room is to fathers. In the
present case the sofa was particularly well adapted for a strategic
purpose, being an old-fashioned one with a high back, mattress, bolsters
and cushions. Once safely penned into one of its deep corners, it was
like a dentist's chair, not too easy to get out of again. Here she could
get at him better to pull him about, if this should seem desirable, or if
she thought fit to cry she could bury her head in the sofa cushion and
abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom failed of its effect.
None of her favourite manoeuvres were so easily adopted in her usual
seat, the arm-chair on the right hand side of the fireplace, and so well
did her son know from his mother's tone that this was going to be a sofa
conversation that he took his pl