CHAPTER XXV.

IMPATIENTLY WAITING.

While it was yet dark, and long before the dimply lake had caught a glint from the coming sun, Witherspoon asked for the morning papers.  At brief periods of troubled sleep during the night he had fancied that he was reading of the wreck of the Colossus and of his own disgrace:  and when he was told that the papers had not come, that it was too early for them, he said:  “Don’t try to keep them back.  I am prepared.”  He wanted to get up and put on his clothes, but his wife begged him to remain in bed.

“Was the doctor here?” he asked.

“Yes, don’t you remember telling him that Brooks had been arrested?”

“No, I don’t remember anything but a bad taste in my mouth.  I know him; he leaves a bad taste as his visiting-card.  What did he say?  Wasn’t he delighted to have a chance at me?”

“He said that if you keep quiet you will be all right in a day or two.”

“Did anybody else come?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Reporters?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so; but Henry saw them.”

“Hum!  I suppose he will be known now as Witherspoon the detective.”

“No; the part he took will be kept a profound secret.”

“I hope so; but don’t you think he would rather be known as some sort of freak?”

“No, dear.  You do him an injustice.”

“But does he do me a justice?  He’s got to pay back every cent I advanced on that newspaper deal.”

“We will attend to that, father.”

“We will.  You are to have nothing to do with it.”

“I mean that he will.”

“That’s different.  I’ll take the thing away from him the first thing he knows.  I’m tired of his browbeating.  Isn’t it time for those papers?”

“Not quite.”

“Have they stopped printing them?  Are they holding back just to worry me now that they’ve got me down?  Where’s Henry?”

“He has just gone out to wait for the carrier-boy.  He’s coming now, I think.”

Henry came in with the morning papers.  “What do they say?” Witherspoon eagerly asked.  He flounced up, and drawing the covers about him, sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’ll see,” Henry answered.

“But be quick about it.  Great goodness, I can’t wait all day.”

“There’s so much that I can’t tell it in a breath.”

“But can’t you give me the gist of it?  Call yourself a newspaper man and can’t get at the gist of a thing.”

“Be patient a moment and I will read to you.”

During more than an hour Witherspoon sat, listening; and when the last paper had been disposed of, he said:  “Why, that isn’t so bad.  They don’t mix me up in it after all.  What was that?  Brooks seems to he wavering and may make a confession?  But what will he say?  That’s the question.  What will he say?”