Supper was served, and the presence of the servant held us silent. I could not look at the food I was helped to, and was passionately craving for the servant to be gone that I might question my uncle. Then, when the opportunity came, I said to him: ‘Is scuttling a ship a serious crime?’ ‘One of the most serious.’ I trembled and said: ‘What is the punishment for it?’ He was silent, as though he did not or would not hear. I sprang up and shrieked out: ‘Uncle, is it hanging?’ ‘It would have been hanging two or three years ago,’ said he. ‘Thank God, it is no longer a capital crime.’ ‘What can they do to Tom?’ I cried. ‘Control yourself, my dear child,’ said my aunt. ‘Oh, uncle, what can they do to him?’ I cried again. ‘They must first prove him guilty.’ ‘And then--and then?’ ‘The penalty is transportation.’ ‘He may be sent out of the country?’ ‘Yes, to Norfolk Island or Tasmania or Botany Bay,’ answered my uncle, in a voice sullen with his sympathy with my misery. ‘For how long?’ ‘You’ll drive yourself mad with these questions,’ said my aunt. ‘He is not yet convicted.’ ‘For how long, uncle?’ ‘For a term--perhaps for life. But he is innocent, and we must prove him so.’ I flung myself into an arm-chair and buried my face. Yet I could not weep; I had cried away all my tears. But, oh, the torment in my half-strangled throat, and the anguish of my dry, heart-breaking sobs! After a while, I succeeded in forcing a sort of composure upon myself. We sat talking until long past midnight. I asked many questions as rationally and as collectedly as I could; but I remarked, with secret horror, in my uncle’s speech a note of misgiving that sank into my spirits like a knife into the heart. Indeed, it seemed more than misgiving, even dark suspicion in him. He said not a word to justify what I felt; but he talked of four to one, and again he talked of Tom’s exaggerated precaution in excessively insuring his venture, and I guessed what was in his mind.