Before he answered he lifted the glass beside him and drank to the last drop, then slowly set it down and said, with a dangerous smile: "I have always been particular about other people's finances, and the statement that you haven't isn't preaching, it's an indictment--so it is, Billy." "An indictment!" Billy bit his finger-nails now, and his voice shook.
"That's what the jury would say, and the judge would do the preaching.
You have stolen twenty-five thousand dollars of trust-moneys!" For a moment there was absolute silence in the room.

From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner.

Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail the record of his infamy.
Billy drew himself back with a jerk of recovery, and said with bravado, but with fear in look and motion: "Don't stare like that.

The thing's done, and you can't undo it, and that's all there is about it." Charley had been staring at the youth-staring and not seeing him really, but seeing his wife and watching her lips say again: "You are ruining Billy!" He was not sober, but his mind was alert, his eccentric soul was getting kaleidoscopic glances at strange facts of life as they rushed past his mind into a painful red obscurity.
"Oh yes, it can be undone, and it's not all there is about it!" he answered quietly.
He got up suddenly, went to the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and, coming back, sat down again beside the table.
Billy watched him with shrewd, hunted eyes.

What did Charley mean to do?
To give him in charge?
To send him to jail?
To shut him out from the world where he had enjoyed himself so much for years and years?
Never to go forth free among his fellows! Never to play the gallant with all the pretty girls he knew! Never to have any sports, or games, or tobacco, or good meals, or canoeing in summer, or tobogganing in winter, or moose-hunting, or any sort of philandering! The thoughts that filled his mind now were not those of regret for his crime, but the fears of the materialist and sentimentalist, who revolted at punishment and all the shame and deprivation it would involve.
"What did you do with the money ?" said Charley, after a minute's silence, in which two minds had travelled far.
"I put it into mines." "What mines ?" "Out on Lake Superior." "What sort of mines ?" "Arsenic." Charley's eye-glass dropped, and rattled against the gold button of his white waistcoat.
"In arsenic-mines!" He put the monocle to his eye again.