The next thing I remember with any distinctness is Dorinda's knocking at my bedroom door. I remember reaching that bedroom, of course, and of meeting Lute in the kitchen and telling him that I was not to be disturbed, that I should not come down to supper and that I wanted to be let alone—to be let ALONE—until I saw fit to show myself. But these memories are all foggy and mixed with dreams and nightmares. As I say, the next thing that I remember distinctly after staggering from the Colton library is Dorinda's knocking at the door of my bedroom.
“Ros! Roscoe!” she was calling. “Can you get up now? There is somebody downstairs waitin' to see you.”
I turned over in bed and began to collect my senses.
“What time is it, Dorinda?” I asked, drowsily.
“About ten, or a little after.”
Ten! Then I had not slept so long, after all. It was nearly four when I went to bed and . . . But what made the room so light? There was no lamp. And the windows . . . I sat up.
“You don't mean to tell me it is ten o'clock IN THE FORENOON!” I cried.
“Um-hm. I hated to disturb you. You've been sleepin' like the everlastin' hills and I knew you must be completely wore out. But I felt pretty sartin you'd want to see the—who 'tis that here's to see you, so I decided to wake you up.”
“It is high time you did, I should think! I'll be down in a minute. Who is it that wishes to see me, Dorinda?”
But Dorinda had gone. I dressed hurriedly and descended the stairs to the dining-room. There, seated in a chair by the door, his eyes closed, his chin resting upon his chest, and his aristocratic nose proclaiming the fact that he slumbered, was Johnson, the Colton butler. I was not greatly surprised. I had rather suspected that my caller might be he, or some other messenger from the big house.
He started at the sound of my entrance and awoke.
“I—I beg your pardon, sir,” he stammered. “I—I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. I've been—I 'aven't closed my eyes for the past two nights, sir, and I am tired out. Mr. Colton wishes to see you at once, sir. He wishes you to come over immediately.”
I was surprised now. “MR. Colton wishes it,” I repeated. “You mean Miss Colton, don't you, Johnson.”
“No, sir. It is Mr. Colton this time, sir. Miss Colton is out in the motor, sir.”
“But Mr. Colton is too ill to see me, or anyone else.”
“No, sir, he isn't. He's very much better. He's quite himself, sir, really. And he is very anxious to see you. On a matter of business, he says.”
I hesitated. I had expected this, though not so soon. He wanted to ask questions concerning my crazy dip into his financial affairs, doubtless. Well, I should have to see him some time or other, and it might as well be now.
I called to Dorinda, who was in the kitchen, and bade her tell Mother, if she inquired for me, that I had gone out, but would be back soon. Then Johnson and I walked briskly along the bluff path. We entered the big house.
“Mr. Colton is in his room, sir,” explained the butler. “You are to see him there. This way, sir.”
But before we reached the foot of the stairs Doctor Quimby came out of the library. He and I shook hands. The doctor was a happy man.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “what's the matter with the one-horse, country-jay doctor now, hey! If there is any one of the Boston specialists at a hundred a visit who can yank a man out of a serious sickness and put him on his feet quicker than I can, why trot him along, that's all! I want to see him! I've been throwing bouquets at myself for the last ten hours. Ho! ho! Say, Ros, you'll think my head is swelled pretty bad, won't you! Ho! ho!”
I asked how the patient was getting on.
“Fine! Tip-top! The only trouble is that he ought to keep perfectly quiet and not do a thing or think of a thing, except getting his strength back, for the next week. But he hadn't been conscious more than a couple of hours before he was asking questions about business and so on. He and his daughter had a long confab this morning and after that he was neither to bind or tie. He must see you, that's all there was to it. Say, Ros, what did you and Phin Cahoon and the Colton girl do yesterday?”
“Oh, we put through one of Mr. Colton's little trades for him, that's all.”
“That's all, hey! Well, whatever 'twas, he and I owe you a vote of thanks. He began to get better the minute he heard it. He's feeling so chipper that, if it wasn't that I swore he shouldn't, he'd have got out of bed by this time. You must go up and see him, I suppose, but don't stay too long. He's a wonder for strength and recuperative powers, but don't tire him too much. If that wife of his was in Europe or somewhere, I'd feel easier. She's the most tiring thing in the house.”
Johnson led the way upstairs. At the chamber door he knocked and announced my presence.
“Bring him in! What is he waiting for?” demanded a voice which, considering how recently its owner had been at death's door, was surprisingly strong. I entered the room.
He was in bed, propped up with pillows. Beside him sat Mrs. Colton. Of the two she looked the more disturbed. Her eyes were wet and she was dabbing at them with a lace handkerchief. Her morning gown was a wondrous creation. “Big Jim,” with his iron-gray hair awry and his eyes snapping, looked remarkably wide awake and alive.
“How are you, Paine?” he said. “Glad to see you. Sorry to bring you over here, but I had to see you and that doctor says I must stay in this room for a while yet. He may be right. My understanding is pretty shaky, I'll admit. You've met Mrs. Colton, haven't you?”
I bowed and expressed my pleasure at meeting the lady. Her bow was rather curt, but she regarded me with an astonishing amount of agitated interest. Also she showed symptoms of more tears.
“I don't remember whether or not Mr. Paine and I have ever been formally introduced,” she observed. “If we haven't it makes no difference, I suppose. The other members of the family seem to know him well enough. And—and mothers nowadays are not considered. I—I must say that—”
She had recourse to the lace handkerchief. I could understand what the doctor meant by calling her the “most tiring thing in the house.” Her husband laid a hand on hers.
“There, there, my dear,” he said, soothingly, “don't be foolish. Sit down, Paine. Henrietta, perhaps you had better leave Mr. Paine and I together. We have some—er—business matters to discuss and you are tired and nervous. I should go to my room and lie down, if I were you.”
Mrs. Colton accepted the suggestion, but her acceptance was not the most gracious.
“I am in the way, as usual,” she observed, chokingly. “Very well, I should be resigned to that by this time, no doubt. I will go. But James, for my sake, don't be weak. Remember what—Oh, remember all we had hoped and planned! When I think of it, I—I—A nobody! A person without . . . What SHALL I do?”
The handkerchief was in active operation. She swept past me to the door. There she turned.
“I may forgive you some time, Mr. Paine,” she sobbed. “I suppose I shall have to. I can't do anything else. But don't ask me to do it now. That would be TOO much!”
The door closed and I heard her sobs as she marched down the hall. To say that I was amazed and decidedly uncomfortable would be a very mild estimate of my feelings. Why should I expect her to forgive me? What had I done? I—or luck and I together—had saved one of her husband's stock speculations from ending in smash; but that was no injury for which I should beg forgiveness. At least I could not see that it was.
Colton looked after her with a troubled expression.
“Nerves are the devil, aren't they,” he observed. “And nerves and a woman together are worse than that. My wife, Paine, is—well, she hasn't been in good health for a long time and Mabel and I have done our best to give her her own way. When you've had your own way for years it rather hurts to be checkmated. I know that from experience. She'll feel better about it by and by.”
“Better about what?” I demanded, involuntarily. “I don't understand Mrs. Colton's meaning in the least.”
He looked at me keenly for a moment without speaking.
“Don't you?” he asked. “You are sure you don't?”
“Certainly I am sure. What I have done that requires forgiveness I don't see.”
Another pause and more scrutiny.
“So you don't understand what she means, hey?” he said again. “All right, all right! We won't discuss that yet a while. If you don't understand—never mind. Time enough for us to talk of that when you do. But, say, Paine,” with one of his dry smiles, “who taught you to buck a stock pool?”
This question I could understand. I had expected this.
“No one taught me,” I answered. “If I had any knowledge at all in that direction I was born with it, I guess. A form of original sin.”
“It's a mighty profitable sort of wickedness—for me. Young man, do you realize what you did? How do you expect me to thank you for that, hey?”
“I don't expect you to thank me at all. It was bull luck that won for you, Mr. Colton. Bull luck and desperation on my part. Miss Colton sent for me to help her. Your confidential man, Davis, refused to make a move without orders from you. You couldn't give any orders. Someone had to do something, or, so it seemed to your daughter and me, your Louisville and Transcontinental deal was a gone goose.”
“It was more than that. I might have come pretty near being a gone goose along with it. Not quite gone, perhaps—I should have had a few cents left in the stocking—but I should have lost a lot more than I care to lose. So it was bull luck, hey? I don't believe it. Tell me the whole story, from beginning to end, will you? Mabel has told me some, but I want to hear it all. Go ahead!”
I thought of Quimby's warning. “I'm afraid I should tire you, Mr. Colton. It is a long story, if I give particulars.”
“Never mind, you give them. That 'tiring' business is some more of that doctor's foolishness. HE makes me tired, all right. You tell me what I want to know or I'll get out of this bed and shake it out of you.”
He looked as if he meant to carry out his threat. I began my tale at the beginning and went on to the astonishing end.
“Don't ask me why I did this or that, Mr. Colton,” I concluded. “I don't know. I think I was off my head part of the time. But something HAD to be done. I tried to look at the affair in a common-sense way, and—”
“And, HAVING common-sense, you used it. Paine, you're a brick! Your kind of common-sense is so rare that it's worth paying any price for. Ha! ha! So it was Keene and his 'Development Company' that gave you the idea. That's good! That little failure of mine wasn't altogether a failure, after all. You saw it was a case where a bluff might win, and you had the sand to bluff it through. That comes of living so long where there is more sand than anything else, I imagine, hey! Ha! ha! Well, bull luck or insanity or whatever you call it, it did the trick. Of course I'm more obliged to you than I can tell. You know that.”
“That's all right, Mr. Colton. Now I think I must be going. You've talked enough.”
“You sit still. I haven't begun to talk yet. Paine, before you did this thing for me I had taken a fancy to you. I believed there was good stuff in you and that I could use you in my business. Now I know I can't afford to do without you. . . . Stop! let me finish. Young man, I told you once that when I made up my mind to do a thing, I always did it. ALWAYS; do you understand? I am going to get you. You are coming with me.”
I had foreseen this, of course. But I had hoped to get away from that room before he reached the point. He had reached it, however, and perhaps it was as well he had. We would end this for all time.
“Mr. Colton,” I answered, “you have a monopoly of some things, but of others you have not. I am just as determined to have my own way in this matter as you are. I shall NOT accept your offer of employment. That is final.”
“Final be damned! Young man—”
“Mr. Colton, if you persist I shall go away.”
“Go away! Before I tell you to? Why, you—”
I rose. “The doctor told me that you must not excite yourself,” I said. “I am going. Good-by.”
He was excited, there was no doubt of that. He sat up in bed.
“You come back!” he ordered. “Come back! If you don't—Well, by the Lord, if you don't I'll get up and come after you!”
I believe he would have tried to do it. I was frightened, on his account. I turned reluctantly. He sank back on the pillow, grinning triumphantly.
“Sit down there,” he panted. “Sit down. Now I want you to tell me the real reason why you won't work for me. By gad! you're the first one in many a day I have had to ask twice. Why? Tell me the truth! Why?”
I hesitated. “Well, for one reason,” I said, “I don't care for your business.”
“Don't CARE for it! After what you just did!”
“I did that because I was driven to it. But I don't care for the stock game. Once I used to think I liked that sort of thing; now I know I don't. If I am anything I am a bank man, a poor sort of one, perhaps, but—”
“Bank man! Why, you idiot! I don't care what you are. I can use you in a dozen places. You don't have to buck the market. I'll do that myself. But there are plenty of places where your brains and that common-sense you talk about will be invaluable to me. I do a banking business, on the side, myself. I own a mining property, a good one, out West. It needs a financial manager, and needs one badly. You come with me, do you hear! I'll place you where you fit, before I get through with you, and I'll make you a rich man in ten years. There! now will you say yes?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
“NO! You are enough to drive a well man crazy, to say nothing of a half-sick relic like me. I say yes—yes—YES! Sooner or later I'll MAKE you. You've lost your place here. You told me yourself that that old crank Dean is going to make this town too hot to hold you. You'll HAVE to go away. Now won't you?”
I nodded. “I shall go away,” I answered. “I have made up my mind to go, now that Mother seems well enough for me to leave her.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don't know.”
He stared at me in silence for what seemed a long time. I thought he must be exhausted, and once more I rose to go.
“Stop! Stay where you are,” he ordered. “I haven't got the answer to you yet, and I know it. There's something back of all this, something I don't know about. I'm going to find out what it is, if it takes me a year. You can tell me now, if you want to. It will save time. What is the real reason why you won't take my offer?”
I don't know why I did it. I had kept the secret all the years and certainly, when I entered that room, I had no intention of revealing it. Yet, now, when he asked this question I turned on him and blurted out what I had sworn no one—least of all he or his—should ever know.
“I'll tell you why,” I cried, desperately. “I can't take the place you offer because you know nothing about me. You don't know who I am. If you did you . . . . Mr. Colton, you don't even know my name.”
He looked at me and shook his head, impatiently. “Either you ARE crazy, or I am,” he muttered. “Don't know your name!”
“No, you don't! You think I am Roscoe Paine. I am not. I am Roscoe Bennett, and my father was Carleton Bennett, the embezzler.”
I had said it. And the moment afterward I was sorry. I would have given anything to take back the words, but repentance came too late. I had said it.
I heard him draw a deep breath. I did not look at him. I did not care to see his face and read on it the disgust and contempt I was sure it expressed.
“Humph!” he exclaimed. “Humph! Do you mean to tell me that your father was Carleton Bennett—Bennett of Bennett and Company?”
“Yes.”
“Well! well! well! Carleton Bennett! No wonder there was something familiar about your mother, something that I seemed to remember. I met her years ago. Well! well! So you're Carleton Bennett's son?”
“Yes, I am his son.”
“Well, what of it?”
I looked at him now. He was smiling, actually smiling. His illness had affected his mind.
“What OF it!” I gasped.
“Ye-es, what of it? What has that got to do with your working for me?”
I could have struck him. If he had not been weak and ill and irresponsible for what he was saying I think I should.
“Mr. Colton,” I said, striving to speak calmly, “you don't understand. My father was Carleton Bennett, the embezzler, the thief, the man whose name was and is a disgrace all over the country. Mother and I came here to hide from that disgrace, to begin a new, clean life under a clean name. Do you think—? Oh, you don't understand!”
“I understand all right. This is the first time I HAVE understood. I see now why a clever man like you was willing to spend his days in a place like Denboro. Well, you aren't going to spend any more of them there. You're going to let me make something worth while out of you.”
This sounded, in one way, like sanity. But in another—
“Mr. Colton,” I cried, “even if you meant it, which you don't—do you suppose I would go back to New York, where so many know me, and enter your employ under an assumed name? Run the risk of—”
“Hush! Enter it under your own name. It's a good name. The Bennetts are one of our oldest families. Ask my wife; she'll tell you that.”
“A good name!”
“Yes. I declare, Paine—Bennett, I mean—I shall begin to believe you haven't got the sense I credited you with. I can see what has been the matter with you. You came here, you and your sick mother, with the scandal of your father's crookedness hanging over you and her sickness making her super-sensitive, and you two kept the secret and brooded over it so long that you have come to think you are criminals, too. You're not. You haven't done anything crooked. What's the matter with you, man? Be sensible!”
“Sensible!”
“Yes, sensible, if you can. I don't care who your father was. He was a smart banker, before he went wrong, and I can see now where you inherited your ability. But never mind that. He's dead; let him stay so. I'm not trying to get him. It's you I want.”
“You want ME! Do you mean you would take me into your employ, knowing who I am?”
“Sure! It is because I know WHAT you are that I want you.”
“Mr. Colton, you—I don't know what to say to you.”
“Try saying 'yes' and see how it seems. It will be a change, anyhow.”
“No, no! I cannot; it is impossible.”
“Oh, you make me weary! . . . Humph! What is it now? Any more 'reasons'?”
“Yes.” I faced him squarely. “Yes,” I said, “there is another reason, one that makes it impossible, utterly impossible, if nothing else did. When I tell you what it is you will understand what I mean and agree with me. Your daughter and I have been thrown together a great deal since she came to Denboro. Our meetings have not been of my seeking, nor of hers. Of late I have realized that, for my own sake, for the sake of my peace of mind, I must not meet her. I must not be where she is. I—”
“Here! Stop!” he broke in sharply. “What is this? Do you mean to tell me that you and Mabel—”
“It is not her fault. It is my own, entirely. Mr. Colton, I—”
“Stop, I tell you! Do you mean to tell me that you are—that you have been making love to my daughter?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“Then what do you mean? That she has been making love to you?”
“Mr. Colton—”
“There! Don't act like the Wild Man of Borneo. Do you mean that you are in love with her?”
“Don't you see now why I cannot accept? I must go away. I am going.”
“Humph! That will do. . . . Humph! Well, Paine—Bennett, I should say; it is hard to keep track of your names—you are rather—er—reckless, it seems to me. Mabel is our only child and her mother and I, naturally, had planned for her future . . . Have you told her of your—recklessness?”
“Of course not! I shall not see her again. I shall leave Denboro as soon as I can. She will never know.”
“Humph! I see . . . I see . . . Well, I don't know that there is anything for me to say.”
“There is not.”
“I am sorry for you, of course.”
“Thank you.”
There was a sharp rap at the door. Doctor Quimby opened it and entered the room. He glanced from me to his patient and his face expressed sharp disapproval.
“You'd better go, Ros,” he snapped. “What is the matter with you? Didn't I tell you not to excite him.”
“I'M not excited,” observed Colton, drily.
“Clear out this minute!” continued the angry doctor. “Ros Paine, I thought you had more sense.”
“So did I,” this from “Big Jim”. “However, I am learning a lot these days. Good-by, Paine.”
I was at the door.
“Oh, by the way,” he called after me, “let me make a suggestion. If I were you, Roscoe, I wouldn't leave Denboro to-day. Not before to-morrow morning, at any rate.”
I did not understand him and I asked for no explanation. It was the first time he had addressed me by my Christian name, but it was not until afterward that I remembered that fact.
That afternoon I was alone in my haven of refuge, the boathouse. Mother and I had had a long talk. I told her everything that had transpired. I kept back nothing, either of my acts or my feelings. She said she was not sorry for what I had done. She was rather glad, than otherwise, that I had disclosed our secret to Mr. Colton.
“He knows now, Roscoe,” she said. “And he was right, too. You and I have brooded over our sorrow and what we considered our disgrace much more than we should. He is right, Boy. We are innocent of any wrong-doing.”
“Yes, Mother,” I answered, “I suppose we are. But we must keep the secret still. No one else in Denboro must know. You know what gossip there would be. There is enough now. I presume I am called a traitor and a blackguard by every person in the town.”
“Why no, you are not. That is the strange thing about it. Luther was up at the post-office this morning and no one seems to know of your sale of the land. Captain Dean has, apparently, kept the news to himself. Why do you suppose he does that?”
“I don't know. I don't know, unless it is because he—no, I can't understand it at all. However, they will know soon enough. By the way, I have never asked Dorinda where Lute was that noon—it seems ages ago—when he was missing at dinner time. And how did he know of Mr. Colton's illness?”
She smiled. “Poor Luther!” she said. “He announced his intention of running away, you remember. As a matter of fact he met the Coltons' chauffeur in the motor car and the chauffeur invited him to go to Bayport with him. The chauffeur had an errand there. Lute accepted—as he says, automobile rides don't come his way every day in the week—and they had trouble with the engine and did not get back until almost night. Then Miss Colton told him of her father's seizure and gave him the note for you. It was to you she turned in her trouble, Boy. She trusts you. Roscoe, I—I think she—”
“Don't say it, Mother. All that is ended. I am going to forget—if I can.”
The rest of our conversation need not be written here. She said many things, such as fond mothers say to their sons and which the sons know too well they do not deserve. We discussed my leaving Denboro and she was so brave and self-sacrificing that my conscience smote me.
“I'll stay, Mother,” I said. “I can't leave you. I'll stay and fight it out with you. After all, it will not be much worse than it was before I went to the bank.”
But she would not hear of my staying. I had a friend in Chicago, a distant relative who knew our story. Perhaps he could help me to a start somewhere. She kissed me and bade me keep up my courage, and I left her. I ate a hurried meal, a combination of breakfast and dinner, and, dodging Lute, who was in the back yard waiting to question me concerning the Coltons, walked down to the boathouse. There, in my armchair, I tried to think, to map out some sort of plan for my future.
It was a hopeless task. I was not interested in it. I did not much care what became of me. If it were not for Mother I should not have cared at all. Nevertheless, for her sake, I must try to plan, and I did.
I was still trying when I heard footsteps approaching the door, the small door at the side, not the big one in front. I did not rise to open the door, nor did I turn my head. The visitor was Lute, probably, and if I kept still he might think I was not within and go away again.
The door opened. “Here he is,” said a voice, a voice that I recognized. I turned quickly and sprang to my feet. Standing behind me was Captain Jedediah Dean and with him George Taylor—George Taylor, who should have been—whom I had supposed to be in Washington with his bride!
“Here he is,” said Captain Jed, again. “Well, Ros, we've come to see you.”
But I paid no attention to him. It was his companion I was staring at. What was he doing here?
“George!” I cried. “GEORGE!”
He stepped forward and held out his hand. He was smiling, but there was a look in his eye which expressed the exact opposite of smiles.
“Ros,” he said, quietly, “Ros Paine, you bull-headed, big-hearted old chump, how are you?”
But I could only stare at him. Why had he come to Denboro? What did his coming to me mean? Why had he come with Captain Jed, the man who had vowed that he was done with me forever? And why was the captain looking at me so oddly?
“George!” I cried in alarm, “George, you haven't—you haven't made a fool of yourself? You haven't—”
Captain Jed interrupted me. “He ain't the fool, Ros,” he said. “That is, he ain't now. I'm the fool. I ought to have known better. Ros, I—I don't know's you'll give it to me, but anyhow I'm goin' to ask it; I beg your pardon.”
“Ros,” said Taylor, before I could reply, “don't stand staring as if you were petrified. Sit down and let me look at you. You pig-headed old idiot, you! What do you mean by it? What did you do it for?”
He pushed me into the chair I had just vacated. Captain Dean took another. George remained standing.
“He IS petrified, I do believe!” he exclaimed.
But my petrification was only temporary. I was beginning to understand, and to be more alarmed than ever.
“What are you doing here in Denboro?” I demanded.
Captain Jed answered for him. “He's here because I telegraphed for him yesterday,” he said. “I wired him to come straight home and take charge of the bank. I had fired you, like the dumb fool I was, and I wanted him to take command. He got here on the mornin' train.”
I remembered what Phin Cahoon had said about the telegram and the captain's making him promise not to mention the name of the person to whom it was sent. It was George, of course. If I had been in a normal state of mind when Phin told me I should have guessed as much.
Taylor took up the conversation. “Yes, I got here,” he said. “And when I got here—or a little before—” with a glance at the captain—“I found out what had been going on since I left. You old chump, Ros Paine! What did you do it for?”
I looked at him and then at his companion. What I saw there confirmed my worst suspicions.
“George,” I said, “if you have told him you must be crazy.”
“I was crazy not to tell him before. I was crazy not to guess what you had been up to. But I didn't suppose anybody would be crazy enough to do what you did, Ros. I didn't imagine for a minute that you would be crazy enough to throw away your job and get yourself into the trouble you knew was sure to come, just to help me. To help ME, by the Lord! Ros! Ros! what can I say to you!”
“You've said enough, and more than enough,” I answered, bitterly. “I did what I did so that you might keep your secret. I did it to help you and Nellie. And if you had kept still no one need ever have known, no one but you and I, George. And now you—”
“Shut up, Ros!” he interrupted. “Shut up, I tell you! Why, confound you, what do you think I am? Do you suppose I would let you sacrifice yourself like that, while I set still and saw you kicked out of town? What do you think I am?”
“But what was the use of it?” I demanded. “It was done. Nothing you could say would change it. For Nellie's sake—”
“There! there!” broke in Captain Jed, “Nellie knows. George told her the day they was married. He told her before they was married. He was man enough to do that and I honor him for it. If he'd only come to me then it would have been a mighty sight better. I'd have understood when I heard about your sellin' Colton the land, and I wouldn't have made a jackass of myself by treatin' you as I done. You! the man that sacrificed yourself to keep my girl from breakin' her heart! When I think what you saved us all from I—I—By the Almighty, Ros Paine! I'll make it up to you somehow. I will! I swear I will!”
He turned away and looked out of the window. George laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I am the one to make it up, Cap'n,” he said, solemnly. “If I live I'll make it up to Ros here, and to you, and to Nellie, God bless her! I expected you would never speak to me again when I'd told you. Telling you—next to telling Nellie—was the toughest job I ever tackled. But I'll make it up to you both, and to Ros. Thank the Lord, it ain't too late to make it up to him!”
“We'll both make it up to him, George,” replied Captain Jed. “As far as we can, we will. If he wants to come back to the bank this minute he can. We'll be proud to have him. But I cal'late,” with a smile, “he'll have bigger fish to fry than we can give him. If what we've just heard is true, he will.”
“I don't know what you mean,” I answered. “And as for the bank—well, you forget one thing: I sold the Shore Lane and the town knows it. How long would the other directors tolerate me in that bank, after that, do you think?”
To my surprise they looked at each other and laughed. Captain Dean shook his head.
“No,” he said, “you're mistook, Ros. The town don't know you sold it. I didn't tell 'em because I wanted George in command of that bank afore the row broke loose. I larned of the sale myself, by chance, over to Ostable and I never told anybody except Dorindy Rogers and her fool of a husband. I'll see that they keep still tongues in their heads. And as for the Lane—well, that won't be closed. Colton don't own it no more.”
“Don't OWN it,” I repeated. “Don't own it! He does. I sold it to him myself.”
“Yes. And George, here, bought it back not an hour ago. We saw His Majesty—sick in bed he was, but just as high and mighty and independent as ever—and George bought back the land and the Lane for thirty-five hundred dollars. The old man didn't seem to give a durn about it any more. He'd had his own way, he said, and that was all he cared about. Besides, he ain't goin' to stay in Denboro much longer. The old lady—his wife—is sick of the place and he only come here on her account. He cal'lates that New York is good enough for him. I cal'late 'tis. Anyhow, Denboro won't hang onto his coattails to hold him back. Tell Ros the whole story, George.”
George told it, beginning with his receipt of his father-in-law's telegram and his hurried return to the Cape. He had gone directly to Captain Dean and confessed the whole thing. The captain had behaved like a trump, I learned. Instead of denouncing his daughter's husband he had forgiven him freely. Then they had gone to see Colton and George had bought the land.
“And I shall give it to the town,” he said. “It's the least I can do. You wonder where the money came from, Ros? I guess you ain't seen the newspapers. There was a high old time in the stock market yesterday and Louisville and Transcontinental climbed half-way to the moon. From being a pauper I'm pretty well fixed.”
“I'm heartily glad of it, George,” I said. “But there is one thing I don't understand. You say you learned of my selling the land before you reached Denboro. Captain Jed says no one but he and my people knew it. How did you find it out?”
Again my two callers looked at each other.
“Why, somebody—a friend of yours—come to me at the Ostable station and dragged Nellie and me off the train. We rode with that person the rest of the way and—the said person told us what had happened and begged us to help you. Seemed to have made a middling good guess that I COULD help, if I would.”
“A person—a friend of mine! Why, I haven't any friend, any friend who knew the truth, or could guess.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Who was it?”
George laughed aloud and Captain Jed laughed with him.
“I guess I shan't tell you,” said the former. “I promised I wouldn't.”
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