Clyde did not like the idea of playing the spy, but if his uncle was engaged in a scheme to rob him, he certainly had a right to know it, and, with no twinges of conscience, he stole up the stairs, and when all was quiet he crawled out upon the balcony.

The night was hot, and Mr. Sharp’s window was partially raised, but protected by a blind.

“Those confounded boys have discovered everything,” Clyde heard his uncle say.  “I would like to know how they did it.  You haven’t been talking, have you?”

“What! Me talk? Me, did you say?” exclaimed Mr. Lycurgus Sharp, dramatically.

“Then how did they find out that I have been speculating?” demanded the other, sharply.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s your lookout,” he said, carelessly.  “Perhaps they overheard us talking this afternoon.”

“Great Scott!  I hope not,” cried Mr. Ellis, excitedly.  “No, I don’t believe that!  No one was around at the time.  I think they must have heard a rumor somewhere—­where, I don’t know, but would give a heap to find out.  If those boys get a notion like that they will spread it everywhere, and I shall be ruined.  What can I do to stop them off?”

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders again.

“I have promised to show them the will and explain where all the money is,” added Mr. Ellis.

“Which you can’t do,” broke in the lawyer, abruptly.

“Which is only a blind to gain time,” the other frowned.  “I am sorry I ever got into this speculation now; but I am in it, and I have got to make that money good, somehow.  I can do it in time, I am sure; but if these boys get to talking, I can’t tell what will happen.”

“Well,” said Mr. Sharp, “I suppose you must get rid of them for a time.  That is about what you are driving at, I apprehend?”

“That’s about the size of it, but how?”

Mr. Sharp picked up a newspaper that was lying on his table and turned to the shipping advertisements.

“I see here,” he said, “the advertisement of a vessel to sail to-morrow for Australia.”

“What of that?”

“What of that!  Why, everything of that.  Can’t you see through a barn-door, when the door is open for you?”

“You mean, send the boys to Australia?”

The lawyer nodded.

“Could you want anything better?  They would be gone a long time.  You can take them to New York to-morrow and ship them off in the afternoon.  Put them before the mast.  Make sailors out of them.”

“Nobody would take them for sailors,” remarked Mr. Ellis, doubtfully.

“What of that?  Go to the captain and tell him that you have two boys who are wild.  Tell him you don’t want to send them to the reform school, but would like to have them put under the discipline of a big ship.  Pay him to take them, and he will jump at the chance, and break them in for you, I’ll warrant.”