Explore "The Lake of Wine" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mr. Tuke sat in his dining-hall, swollen and glowering as a ruffled tom-cat. He had not struck in haste to repent at leisure; but it is true that he was woefully exercised in his mind as to what to do next. The logical sequence of his action, he felt, should be incarceration for his prisoner in Winton Gaol on the strength of an information -- his own -- laid against him. Certainly. And how should the information be worded? It was at this point he always fell to gnawing his lips, and drumming on the table with his fingers, and glaring at a robin on the window-sill, as if he knew it could furnish the solution if it would only leave off hopping and twittering.
Now, he had done rightly and as he had engaged himself to act. He had bided his time, and struck on the first evidence of guilt. Still, now he came to think it over -- with what impartiality he could command -- he could not but acknowledge that the proofs might show extremely negative to an unbiased intelligence. For what did they amount to? Crime? No. But the invitation to it.