“[Where’d you get that horse?]”

A Tale of
the Tow-Path

By Homer Greene

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL CO.
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1892,
By Perry Mason & Co.

Copyright, 1892,
By T. Y. Crowell & Co.

CONTENTS.

A TALE OF THE TOW-PATH.

[CHAPTER I.]
THE RESULT OF A WHIPPING.

Hoeing corn is not very hard work for one who is accustomed to it, but the circumstances of the hoeing may make the task an exceedingly laborious one. They did so in Joe Gaston’s case. Joe Gaston thought he had never in his life before been put to such hard and disagreeable work.

In the first place, the ground had been broken up only that spring, and it was very rough and stony. Next, the field was on a western slope, and the rays of the afternoon sun shone squarely on it. It was an unusually oppressive day, too, for the last of June.

Finally, and chiefly: Joe was a fourteen-year-old boy, fond of sport and of companionship, and he was working there alone.

Leaning heavily on the handle of his hoe, Joe gazed pensively away to the west. At the foot of the slope lay a small lake, its unruffled surface reflecting with startling distinctness the foliage that lined its shores, and the two white clouds that hung above in the blue sky.

Through a rift in the hills could be seen, far away, the line of purple mountains that lay beyond the west shore of the Hudson River.

“It aint fair!” said Joe, talking aloud to himself, as he sometimes did. “I don’t have time to do anything but just work, work, work. Right in the middle of summer, too, when you can have the most fun of any time in the year, if you only had a chance to get it! There’s berrying and bee-hunting and swimming and fishing and—and lots of things.”

The look of pensiveness on Joe’s face changed into one of longing.

“Fishing’s awful good now,” he continued; “but I don’t get a chance to go, unless I go without asking, and even then I dassent carry home the fish.”

After another minute of reflection he turned his face toward the upland, where, in the distance, the white porch and gables of a farmhouse were visible through an opening between two rows of orchard trees.

“I guess I’ll just run down to the pond a few minutes, and see if there’s any fish there. It aint more’n three o’clock; Father’s gone up to Morgan’s with that load of hay, and he won’t be home before five o’clock. I can get back and hoe a lot of corn by that time.”

He cast his eyes critically toward the sun, hesitated for another minute, and then, shouldering his hoe, started down the hill toward the lake; but before he had gone half-way to the water’s edge he stopped and stood still, nervously chewing a spear of June-grass, and glancing alternately back at the cornfield and forward to the tempting waters of the lake.

“I don’t care!” he said at last. “I can’t help it if it aint right. If Father’d only let me go a-fishing once in a while, I wouldn’t want to sneak off. It’s his fault; ’cause I’ve got to fish, and that’s all there is about it.”

In a swampy place near by he dug some angle-worms for bait. Then, taking a pole and line from the long grass behind a log, he skirted the shore for a short distance, climbed out on the body of a fallen tree that lay partly in the water, and flung off his line.

Joe had not long to wait. The lazy motion of the brightly painted float on the smooth surface of the lake gave place to a sudden swinging movement. Then the small end dipped till only the round red top was visible. In the next instant that too disappeared, and the pole curved till the tip of it almost touched the water.

For a second only Joe played with his victim. Then, with a quick, steady pull, he drew the darting, curving, shining fish from its home, and landed it among the weeds on the shore.

Flushed with delight, he hastened to cast his line again into the pool. Scarcely a minute later he pulled out another fish. It seemed to be an excellent day for the sport.

Indeed, he had never before known the fish to bite so well. They kept him busy baiting his hook and drawing them in.

He was in the high tide of enjoyment. The cornfield was forgotten.

Suddenly he became aware that some one was standing behind him among the low bushes on the shore. He turned to see who it was. There, confronting him, a frown on his face, stood Joe’s father.

The pole in the boy’s hands dropped till the tip of it splashed into the water; his face turned red and then pale, and there was a strange weakness in his knees.

He drew his line in slowly, wound it about the pole, and stepped from the log to the shore. As yet no word had been said by either father or son, but Joe had a vague sense that it was for him to speak first.

“I thought,” he stammered, “that I’d come down and see—and see if—if the fish was biting to-day—”

“Well,” said his father, grimly, “are they biting?”

“They’ve bit first-rate,” responded the boy, quickly. “I’ve got fourteen in this little puddle here.”

“Throw them back into the pond,” commanded Mr. Gaston.

Joe bent over, and taking the fish one by one from the little pool of water where he had placed them, he tossed them lightly into the lake. He came to one that, badly wounded, was floating on its side.

“’Taint any use throwing that one back,” he said. “It’s—”

“Throw it back!” was the stern command.

Joe threw it back. When this task was completed, Mr. Gaston said,—

“Have you got your knife in your pocket, Joseph?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cut me a whip, then,—a beech one; you’ll find a good one on that sapling.”

Joe took his knife and cut from the sapling indicated a long, slender branch. He trimmed it and gave it to his father. He well knew the use to which it was to be put; and although his spirit rebelled, though he felt that he did not really deserve the punishment, he obeyed without a word.

“Joseph,” said his father, “do you remember my warning you last week not to go fishing again without my permission, and my telling you that if you did, I should whip you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I suppose you expect me to keep my word?”

Joe said nothing.

Mr. Gaston stood for another moment in anxious thought. He did not wish to whip the boy, surely. Though he was outwardly a cold man, he had all a father’s affection for Joe; but would he not fail of his duty if he did not punish him for his disobedience?

“Joseph,” he said, “can you think of any better remedy than whipping?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Well, if you’d just let me go fishing once in a while,—say Saturday afternoons,—I’d never think of running away to go,—never.”

“That is, if I allow you to do what you choose, you won’t be disobeying me when you do it? Is that the idea?”

“Yes, sir, something like that.”

Joe felt that there was a difference, however, but he could not at that moment explain it. Besides, he wished to take the opportunity to air other grievances, of which heretofore he had never ventured to speak.

“I don’t have privileges like other boys, anyway,” he continued. “Tom Brown don’t have to work every day in the week, and he can go to town every Saturday if he wants to, and go to fairs, and have pocket-money to spend; and I don’t have anything, not even when I earn it. And Mr. Dolliver lets his Jim take his horse and go riding whenever he feels like it; but I aint allowed to go anywhere, nor do anything that other boys do!”

Joe paused, breathless and in much excitement.

Mr. Gaston said, “It’s your duty to obey your parents, no matter if they can’t give you all the pleasures that some other boys have. You are not yet old enough to set up your judgment against ours. We must govern you as we think best.”

Again there was a minute’s silence. Then the father said, “Joseph, I had intended to whip you; but it’s a hard and unpleasant duty, and I’m inclined to try you once more without it, if you’ll apologize and make a new promise not to go fishing again without my permission.”

“I’ll apologize,” replied Joe, “but I won’t promise.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause you wouldn’t give me your permission, and then I’d break the promise. That’s the way it always goes.”

“Very well; you may take your choice,—either the promise or the whipping. I can’t argue with you about it.”

Joe was excited and angry. He did not take time to think, but answered hotly that his father could whip him if he wished. Mr. Gaston tested the whip, cutting the air with it once or twice. It made a cruel sound.

“I want you to remember, after it is over,” he said slowly, “that it was your choice, and not my pleasure. Stand out here, and turn your back to me.”

Joe’s chastisement followed. It was a severe one. The pain was greater than Joe had expected. The shock of the first blow was still fresh when the second one came, and this was followed up by half-a-dozen more in rapid succession.

“Now,” said the father, when it was over, throwing the whip aside, “you may go back to the cornfield and go to work.”

Without a word, and indeed with mind and heart too full for utterance, the boy shouldered his hoe and started back up the hill. Mr. Gaston, taking a path which skirted the field, walked slowly toward home. His mind too was filled with conflicting emotions.

He felt that he was striving to do his duty by the boy, to bring him up to honest, sober manhood. Yet for the first time he began to wonder whether the course he was pursuing with him was just the right one to lead to that end.

He paused, and looked across the field to where Joe, who had reached his old place, was bending over a long row of corn; and his heart filled with fatherly sympathy for the lad in spite of his waywardness and obstinacy. The father felt that he would like to reason with Joe again more gently, and started to cross the field for that purpose. But fearing that Joe might think that he had repented of his severity, he turned back and made his way, with a heavy heart, toward home.

As for Joe, his anger settled before an hour had passed into a feeling of strong and stubborn resentment. That his punishment had been too severe and humiliating he had no doubt. That he had long been treated unfairly by his father and had been governed with undue strictness he fully believed.

Slowly, as he pondered over it, there came into his mind a plan to put an end to it all,—a plan which, without further consideration, he resolved to adopt. This, he was determined, should be the last whipping he would receive at his father’s hands.

He was interrupted in his brooding and his plans by a young girl, who came down toward him between the rows of springing corn. It was his sister Jennie, who was two years younger than he.

She looked up at him, as she advanced, with mingled curiosity and sympathy in her expressive eyes and face.

“Joe,” she said, in an awe-stricken voice, “did Father whip you?”

“What makes you think he whipped me?” asked Joe.

“Because, I—I heard him tell Mother so.”

“What did Mother say?”

“Oh, she cried, and she said she was sorry it had to be done. Did he whip you hard, Joe?”

“Pretty hard, but it’s the last time. He’ll never whip me again, Jennie.”

“Are you going to be a better boy?”

“No, a worse one.”

Jennie stood for a moment silent and wondering at this paradoxical statement. Then an idea flashed into her mind.

“Joe!” she cried, “you—you’re not going to run away?”

“That’s just what I am going to do. I’ve stood it here as long as I can.”

“O Joe! what’ll Father say?”

“It don’t make much difference what he says. I’m goin’ to—say, Jennie! don’t you go and tell now, ’fore I get started. You wouldn’t do as mean a thing as that, would you, Jen? Promise now!”

“I—I—maybe if Father knew you’d made up your mind to go, he’d treat you better.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Look here, Jen! if you say anything about it I’ll—say now, you won’t, will you?”

“N—no, not if you don’t want me to, but I’m awful scared about it. What’ll Mother say?” asked the girl, wiping from her eyes the fast-falling tears.

“That’s where the trouble is, Jen,” replied the boy, leaning on the handle of his hoe, and gazing reflectively off to the hills. “I hate to leave Mother, she’s good to me; but Father and I can’t get along together after what’s happened to-day, that’s plain.”

“And won’t you ever come back again?” asked Jennie, plaintively.

“Not for seven years,” answered Joe; “then I’ll be twenty-one, an’ my own boss, and I can go fishing whenever I feel like it.”

“O Joe!” Jennie’s tears fell still faster. “Joe! I’m afraid—what—made you—tell me?”

“You asked me!”

“But I didn’t—didn’t want you to tell me anything—anything so dreadful!”

From the direction of the house came the sound of the supper-bell. Joe shouldered his hoe again; Jennie rose from her seat on a rock, and together they walked slowly home. On the way Joe exacted from Jennie a faithful promise that she would tell nothing about his plan.

At the supper-table Joe was silent and moody, and ate little. After doing the portion of the chores that fell to his lot, he went at once to his room. His back still smarted and ached from the whipping; his mind was still troubled, and indignation and rebellion still ruled in his breast.

Before he slept, his mother came to see that he was safely in bed, and to tuck him in for the night. She knew that this had been a very bitter day for him, and although she feared he had deserved his punishment, she grieved for him, and suffered with him from the bottom of her heart.

It was with more than the customary tenderness that she tucked the bed-clothing around him, and kissed him good-night.

“Good-night, Mother!” he said, looking up through the dim light of the room into her face; “good-night!”

He did not let go of her hand; and when he tried to say something more, he broke down and burst into tears.

So she knelt down by the side of the bed, and smoothing his hair back from his forehead, talked gently to him for a long time. After more good-night kisses she left him, and went back to her never-ending work.

This, for Joe, was the hardest part of leaving home; for he was very fond of his mother, and knew that his going would almost break her heart. Still, now that he had resolved to go, he would not change his mind, even for his mother’s sake.

It was long before Joe fell asleep, and even then he was beset by unpleasant dreams, so that his rest availed him but little.

Before daybreak he arose, dressed himself, gathered into a bundle a few articles of clothing, a few of his choicest treasures, and a little money that he had earned and saved, and then on tiptoe left his room.

At the end of the hall a door was opened, and a little white-robed figure glided out and into his arms. It was Jennie.

“O Joe!” she whispered, “are you really going?”

“’Sh! Jen, don’t make any noise. Yes, I’m going. There, don’t cry—good-by!”

He bent down and kissed her, but she could not speak for the sobs that choked her. After holding her arms around his neck for a moment, she vanished into her room.

Joe went softly down the stairs, and out at the kitchen door. It was cool and refreshing in the open air. In the east the sky was beginning to put on the gray of morning.

Jennie, looking down through the dusk from the window of her room, saw Joe walk down the path to the road gate, then turn, as if some new thought had struck him, and cross the yard to the barn, entering it by the stable door.

“Oh!” exclaimed the child to herself, in a frightened whisper, “oh! he’s going to take the horse; he’s going to take Charlie!”

She sank down on the floor, and covered her face with her hands. She did not want to see so dreadful a thing happen. But curiosity finally got the better of her fear, and she looked out again just in time to see some one lead the gray horse from the stable, mount him, and ride away into the dusk.

“O Joe!” she murmured. “O Charlie! Oh, what will Father say now! Isn’t it dreadful, dreadful!”

But though she did not know it, the person whom Jennie saw riding away into the dusk on old Charlie’s back was not Joe.

[CHAPTER II.]
WHO TOOK OLD CHARLIE?

Joe’s errand to the stable on the morning when he went away was not what his sister Jennie supposed. He went there only to say farewell to the horse that had been his friend and companion since he was a little child. He loved “Old Charlie,” and could not go away without caressing him and saying good-by.

The great gray horse, wakened by the opening of the stable door, rose clumsily to his feet, and stared, a little frightened, across his manger toward the visitor who came so early.

“Hello, Charlie!” said Joe, softly, feeling his way forward in the darkness of the stable, and laying his hand on the horse’s forehead. “I’m going away, Charlie; I thought I’d come and say good-by to you.”

He had talked to the horse in this way, as to a human being, ever since he could remember. To him there was nothing absurd in it. Charlie, recognizing his young master, pushed his nose forward and rubbed it against Joe’s breast.

“I’m going away,” repeated the boy, “an’ it isn’t likely we’ll ever see each other again.”

He leaned over the manger, pulled the horse’s head down to his breast, and laid his cheek against it for a moment. Then he went out at the stable door, shut and latched it, hurried across the barnyard and out upon the grassy expanse at the side of the highway.

At the turn in the road Joe looked back. He could see the white front of the old homestead showing dimly against the dark shadows where night lingered. It looked so serene, so quiet, so comfortable!

He brushed away the tears that started to his eyes, choked down the sob that rose in his throat, and turning once more, walked rapidly away toward the east. Almost before Joe had turned into the road from the bars, a man crept cautiously from the shadows behind the barn, and advanced to the stable door. He was short and thickly built, and very bow-legged.

“Close call for me, that there was,” he said to himself. “Another minute, an’ I’d ’a’ been inside o’ that there stable door, an’ ’e’d ’a’ come plump onto me; that’s w’at ’e’d ’a’ done. Queer thing, anyway. W’y didn’t ’e take the ’oss, I want to know, an’ not be scarin’ honest folk out o’ their seving senses that way for nothink?”

The man unlatched the stable door, opened it noiselessly, and went in.

It was not many minutes before he came out again, leading Old Charlie, and stroking him in order to keep him quiet.

The horse was bridled, and a blanket was strapped over his back in lieu of a saddle. The animal was evidently suspicious and frightened, and moved about nervously, snorting a little, and with ears pricked up and eyes wide open. Once he snorted so loudly that the bow-legged man, glancing uneasily toward the farmhouse, made haste to close the stable door and lead the horse to the bars, where he could more readily mount him.

“Nothing venture, nothing ’ave,” he said, as he leaped clumsily to the beast’s back. Then, having walked the horse for a few rods, he struck Charlie with his hand, and rode away rapidly in the direction which Joe had taken.

Very soon, however, he turned the horse’s head into a grassy cart-road leading into the woods which he had carefully explored the previous day. This he followed—Old Charlie’s smooth-shod feet leaving no track on the turf—until it brought him out upon a little-travelled highway about a mile distant.

Here the thief cut a sharp little stick from a tree, and urging Old Charlie to a rapid gait, galloped on ten miles or more, until daylight had fully broken. Then he took refuge once more in the woods, and breakfasted out of a little bag of plunder which he had brought from the Gaston farm.

“A good start, Callipers, me boy,” he said to himself. “You mind your bloomin’ eye an’ you’re all right. It don’t do to lose your ’ead an’ go too fast, or go too fast an’ lose your ’ead.”

In the mean time, back at the farm the cattle had begun to stir about in the barnyard with the lifting of the night shadows. It was broad daylight before the hired man went up through the gate with two gleaming tin pails in his hands. Smoke rose from the chimney of the farmhouse kitchen; the household was astir.

Every one was about but Joe. His mother had not yet called him. She thought to let him sleep a little later than usual. Yesterday had been such a bitter day for him!

“Where’s Joe?” asked Mr. Gaston, coming into the kitchen. “Isn’t he up yet?”

“No,” replied the mother. “He wasn’t feeling very well last night, and I thought I wouldn’t call him till breakfast was all ready.”

“Mother,” said the farmer, “I’m afraid you’re indulging the boy in lazy habits. He oughtn’t to be left in bed later just because he misbehaved yesterday.”

“Well,” she said, “he was really feeling almost sick last night.”

Little Jennie, whose eyes were red from weeping, and whose face was pale with anxiety, listened timidly to the conversation, and then stole softly from the room.

What would happen when it was found that Joe had gone? What would happen when it was found that he had taken Old Charlie? This was the burden of her thought and fear.

Whatever it might be, she knew she had not the courage to face it, so she crept away to hide herself and to weep out her grief.

“If Joe was sick last night,” the farmer went on, “it was just because he was disobedient and had to be whipped. I hope he’s in a better frame of mind this morning. It is very painful for me to punish him. I wish I might—”

The outside door opened, and the hired man entered, interrupting Mr. Gaston’s speech. He seemed to be troubled and excited.

“Have you had Charlie out this morning, Mr. Gaston?” he asked.

“Charlie? What Charlie?”

“Why, Charlie the horse. He isn’t in the stable.”

“Not in the stable?”

“No, sir. An’ I can’t find him nowheres. The bridle’s gone, too, an’ the blanket an’ the surcingle.”

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Gaston, dropping the toast on the hearth in her excitement.

“Who put him up last night?” asked the farmer.

“I did,” replied the hired man.

“Did you tie him fast?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And shut the stable door?”

“Yes, sir; but I asked Joe to water him after he’d had his feed. Joe often does that, you know.”

“Call Joe!” the farmer said sharply to his wife.

Mrs. Gaston hurried upstairs to the door of Joe’s room.

She knocked, but there was no answer. She called, but no one responded. Then she opened the door and entered.

The bed was vacant. She looked into the closet, behind the trunk, under the bed; but no boy was to be found.

The truth suddenly forced itself into Mrs. Gaston’s mind. Joe had gone—run away!—left his home and her! She grew suddenly weak, and sat down upon the bed till her strength should return to her.

Joe gone? She could hardly believe it. How could her only boy leave her? How could she live without him?

It occurred to her that he could not yet have gone far, and that he might be found and brought back before it was too late. She hurried from the room, flew down the stairs, and burst into the dining-room.

“Go after him!” she exclaimed. “Send for him quick, before any harm comes to him! He’s gone—he’s run away, he’s—”

“Who’s gone?” questioned Mr. Gaston, dazed by his wife’s words and manner. “What is the matter with everybody this morning?”

“Joe! Joe’s gone! Follow him, Father, do, and bring him back! Take Charlie and follow him at once. He can’t be far! Take Charlie and—Oh! Charlie’s gone, too—they’ve gone, they’ve gone—”

“Together!” said Mr. Gaston, sinking into a chair, and staring across the table at his wife, who was already seated and silent, dumb with the revelation of what appeared to be both mystery and crime.

The hired man, after witnessing for a moment the agony apparent on the faces of both father and mother, opened the door softly and went out.

Mrs. Gaston was the first to recover her voice.

“Father,” she said, “do you think Joe took the horse?”

“It looks very much like it,” he said. “They’re both gone.”

“Yes; but they may not have gone together, after all. Or if they have gone together, perhaps Joe had some errand that we don’t know about, and will come back soon. Maybe he hasn’t gone at all, but is somewhere about the place now. Don’t let’s accuse him before we know!”

“You are right; we’ll find the proof first.”

Mr. Gaston went to the door and called the hired man.

“Ralph,” he said, “don’t say anything for the present about this. We think some mistake has been made. But you may just make a quiet search for the horse around the farm and the neighborhood, and let me know if you find any trace of him.

“Now,” he continued, turning back into the house, “we will search for evidence. Let us go first to Joe’s room and see what we can find there.”

Together the father and mother mounted the stairs to the little east room, and looked about.

On a stand in the corner Mrs. Gaston discovered something that, in her former hurried search, had escaped her notice. It was a note in Joe’s handwriting, written carefully in pencil, and it read as follows:

Dear Mother,—I am going away. Father is too hard on me. I will come back to see you when I am twenty-one if Father will let me. Forgive me for making you feel bad, and for being an ungrateful boy. Good-by,

Joe.

She read the note, handed it to her husband, and, sinking into a chair, burst into tears.

When Mr. Gaston had read it he went to the open window and stood for many minutes, looking away, thoughtfully and sternly, to the distant hills.

“Father,” sobbed his wife, “you will go after Joe, won’t you? You’ll find him, and bring him back, won’t you?”

It seemed to her a long time before he answered her.

“I believe,” he said at last, “that when a boy runs away from a good home, it is better, as a rule, to let him go, and find out his mistake; he’s sure to find it out in a very short time. If he is followed and threatened and forced, he will come back sullen and angry, and will make up his mind to go again at the first chance.”

“But if he’s followed and reasoned with and persuaded?” said the mother, appealingly.

“If he is followed and reasoned with and persuaded,” answered the father, “he will get a great notion of his own importance. He will believe that he has gained his point, and will come back impudent and overbearing.”

“But think what harm may come to him,—what suffering!”

“Probably he will suffer. There’s no easy way to learn the lesson he must learn. If I could save him from the suffering that his folly is sure to bring on him, and at the same time feel sure that he has really repented and is bound to do better, I would go to the end of the earth to find him. But we’ll talk about that later. There’s no doubt now that Joe’s gone. Let us see if we can find out anything about the horse. It will make a difference if he has taken him.”

But the good woman could not yet give up her appeal in behalf of her boy.

“You won’t be too harsh with him, Father? You won’t allow him to suffer too much? If he don’t come back soon, you’ll go and find him, won’t you,—if he don’t come back by the end of next week? He isn’t strong, you know, and he’s so sensitive. And I can’t think he intended to do anything wrong; I can’t think it! I will not believe it!”

They were passing through the upper hall to the head of the staircase. When they came near to the dark closet that opened on the landing, they were startled by the strange noise that proceeded from behind the door,—a noise as of some one sobbing.

Mr. Gaston threw open the closet door and peered into the darkness, while his wife stood behind him, half-frightened, looking over his shoulder.

“Why!” he exclaimed, when his eyes had adapted themselves to the inner gloom, “it’s Jennie!”

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Gaston, in another fright.

“Jennie,” said Mr. Gaston, sternly, “come right out. What does this mean?”

Poor Jennie, her eyes red with weeping and with anguish written all over her tear-marked face, rose from her seat on an old chest, and came into the light of the hall.

She began to sob again as though her heart would break.

“What does this mean?” repeated her father.

“N—nothing,” sobbed Jennie, “only I—I—”

“See here!” exclaimed her father, “did you know that Joe had gone away?”

“I—I was afraid he had.”

“Did you know he intended to go?” asked her father, sternly.

“Why, he—he told me yesterday that he—was—”

“Going to run away?”

“Ye—yes.”

“O Jennie!” exclaimed her mother, “why didn’t you tell us as soon as you knew it, so that we might stop him?”

“He made—made me promise not to! I couldn’t help it.”

Little by little, in answer to repeated questions, the narration broken by many sobs, the child gave the story of the previous day’s interview with Joe.

“Jennie,” said Mr. Gaston, finally, “have you seen Joe this morning? Answer me truly.”

“Ye—yes, Father.”

“Where?”

“Here, in the hall.”

“At what hour?”

“I don’t—don’t know. It was before daylight. He was just starting. I bade him good-by, and went back into my room, and he went on downstairs.”

Jennie was lavish of her information this time. The questions were getting dangerously near a point she dreaded, and she hoped there would be no more of them.

Alas! The very next question shook the foundation of her guilty knowledge of Joe’s apparent crime.

“Jennie,” asked her father, “did you see Joe this morning after he left the house?”

“Yes, Father; I looked out o’ the window, an’ saw him go down the path.”

“Which way did he go when he got to the road?” asked her mother, eagerly.

“He—he went off that way,” replied Jennie, faintly, “east.”

“He went east, Father!” exclaimed Mrs. Gaston,—“east toward the mountains, not west toward the river. It will be easier to find him, you know. And he didn’t take the horse; you see he didn’t take Charlie!”

“Wait,” said Mr. Gaston, sternly. “Jennie, tell us the whole story. Do you mean to say that you saw Joe go down the path and out at the gate, and walk away toward the east?”

Half-unconsciously she made a final attempt to save Joe.

“No, Father, he turned around and came back up the path toward the house.”

The mother asked no more questions. She instinctively felt that her worst fears were about to be realized.

“Did he come back into the house?” asked the father, mercilessly.

“N—no.”

“Where did he go?”

There was no way out of it. Jennie must tell what she had seen.

“O Father!” she cried, “he came back—and then—he went into the stable.”

“Did you see him come out?”

“No, oh, no! But I saw him ride out through the bars on Old Charlie, and away up the road. I did, I saw him. O Joe! Oh, dear me! Oh, I wish—I wish—I was dead!”

The little girl fell to wringing her hands and sobbing again with great violence, convinced that she had been the victim of unhappy circumstances, and that she had been a traitor to Joe, whom she loved dearly.

Mrs. Gaston, drawing the child to her, sat on the stair-landing and said nothing; but sorrow and sympathy, struggling for the mastery in her heart, sent the bitter tears afresh to her eyes.

Over the face of Joe’s father came a look that had not been there before.

“I shall not follow him, Mother,” he said. “He may have the horse, but he must not come back here until he comes in sackcloth and ashes. I am sorry that I have lived to see the day when a son of mine has come to be little better than a common thief.”

The father had passed down the stairs and out at the door, while mother and daughter sat long together, mingling their tears over the unhappy fate of the boy whom both had idolized, and whose strange folly had made him, to all intents and purposes, an exile from his home.

[CHAPTER III.]
ON THE CANAL.

It is at Rondout that the Delaware and Hudson Canal, reaching across from the anthracite-coal regions of Pennsylvania, touches tide-water on the Hudson. It is here that the bulky canal-boats, having discharged their cargoes of coal, turn their bows again to the westward. From the low-lying lands at the river’s edge the mouth of Rondout Creek curves back into the hills, forming for miles a safe, broad harbor.

On the northerly shore of the creek is the wharf. On the left side of this wharf long lines of canal-boats are tied to the wharf posts, and fastened one to another. On the right, canal stores, blacksmith’s shops, and stables extend as far as the eye can reach.

In the early morning, before the activities of the day have begun, this wharf is a deserted and forbidding place, and on one such early morning in September, with chill air and cloudy skies, and not even a rose tint in the dull east, there was no one to be seen throughout the whole length of the wharf save one slowly moving boy.

This boy was so dull and miserable in appearance as to be hardly noticeable against the general dulness around him. His clothing was ragged and dusty, his shoes were out at both heel and toe. The battered hat, pulled well down over his eyes, shaded a haggard and a hungry face. His mother herself would scarcely have recognized this scarecrow as Joe Gaston.

What his hardships and sufferings had been since that June morning when he angrily left his home, his appearance told more eloquently than words can describe them. Many and many a day he had longed for the good and wholesome food he knew was on his father’s table. Many and many a night, as he lay under some unwelcoming roof, or still oftener with the open sky above him, he had dreamed of that gentle mother who used always to fold the soft covering over him, and give him the good-night kiss.

But a few days before our meeting with him here on the canal Joe had met, on the public road, a roving wood-sawyer who recognized him. They walked together a long way.

The man, who had sawed wood for Joe’s father several times, had been at the homestead since Joe’s departure. He seemed surprised not to find the horse with Joe, and he finally asked the boy what he had done with him.

He was still more surprised when he learned that Joe had not had Old Charlie, and knew nothing about the theft. But poor Joe! It touched him to the quick to learn, as he did, that at home he was regarded as a horse-thief.

It was this that he brooded over now, day and night. To think that they should accuse him of stealing Old Charlie!

Joe had, in his wanderings, followed a sort of circle, which had now brought him within a comparatively short distance of home; but if, before this, he had thought of returning there, the thought was now driven from his mind. He felt that he could not go back to face this charge against him, for who would believe him? It was time to turn his face to the westward.

Besides, he had said that he would not return until he was twenty-one years old. His pride had not yet been enough chastened by misery to cause him to abandon his foolish boast.

So here he was, on the wharf at Rondout this raw September morning, seeking not so much independence and fortune as bread and shelter.

Joe walked slowly along close to the buildings, for the wind that swept down the creek was disagreeably cold. An occasional raindrop struck his face. He was very thinly clad, too, and he could not help shivering now and then as he pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and turned his back for a moment to the wind.

He stopped to look at a few loaves of bread and a string of sausages that were displayed in the window of a cheap store. He wondered whether it would be wiser to spend his last few pennies for his breakfast, or save them for his dinner.

He had about decided to buy a piece of bread, and was waiting for the store to be opened for the day, when some one accosted him from behind: “Say, you boy!”

Joe turned and looked at the speaker. He was a rather stout, low-browed man, with a very red nose and a shaven face, upon which a rough stubble of beard had begun to grow.

His pantaloons were supported from below by the tops of his rubber boots, and suspended from above by a single brace, which ran diagonally across the breast of his red flannel shirt.

“Do you want a job, young fellow?” continued the man.

“What kind of a job?” asked Joe.

“Drivin’.”

“Drivin’ what?”

“Hosses on the canal. My boy got sick las’ night, an’ I’ve got to git another one. Do ye know anything about hosses?”

“Yes,” replied Joe. “I’ve driven ’em a good deal, and always taken care of ’em.”

“Well, my boat’s unloaded, an’ I’m ready to pull right out. Wha’ do ye say? Go?”

“What wages do you pay?” asked the boy, hesitatingly.

“Well, you’re big an’ smart-lookin’ an’ know how to handle hosses, an’ I’ll give you extra big pay.”

Joe’s spirits rose. True, the man looked forbidding, and undesirable as a master; but if he paid good wages, the rest might be endured.

“Well, what will you pay?” persisted the boy.

“I’ll give ye four dollars for the round trip, an’ board an’ lodge ye.”

Joe’s spirits fell.

“How long does the trip take?” he asked.

“Two weeks.”

“An’ when do I get my money?”