“But he will turn us out of the house; and what shall we do then?”

“Don’t cry, mother; it will come round all right.  I have friends who are rich and powerful, and who will help us.”

“You don’t know what you say, Bobby.  Sixty dollars is a great deal of money, and if we should sell all we have, it would scarcely bring that.”

“Leave it all to me, mother; I feel as though I could do something now.  I am old enough to make money.”

“What can you do?”

“Now or never!” replied Bobby, whose mind had wandered from the scene to the busy world, where fortunes are made and lost every day.  “Now or never!” muttered he again.

“But Bobby, you have not told me where you got all that gold.”

“Dinner is ready, I see, and I will tell you while we eat.”

Bobby had been a fishing, and to be hungry is a part of the fisherman’s luck; so he seated himself at the table, and gave his mother a full account of all that had occurred at the bridge.

The fond mother trembled when she realized the peril her son had incurred for the sake of the young lady; but her maternal heart swelled with admiration in view of the generous deed, and she thanked God that she was the mother of such a son.  She felt more confidence in him then than she had ever felt before, and she realized that he would be the stay and the staff of her declining years.

Bobby finished his dinner, and seated himself on the front door step.  His mind was absorbed, by a new and brilliant idea; and for half an hour he kept up a most tremendous thinking.

“Now or never!” said he, as he rose and walked down the road towards Riverdale Centre.

CHAPTER V.

In which Bobby gives his note for sixty dollars.

A great idea was born in Bobby’s brain.  His mother’s weakness and the insecurity of her position were more apparent to him than they had ever been before.  She was in the power of her creditor, who might turn her out of the little black house, sell the place at auction, and thus, perhaps, deprive her of the whole or a large part of his father’s and her own hard earnings.

But this was not the peculiar hardship of her situation, as her devoted son understood it.  It was not the hard work alone which she was called upon to perform, not the coarseness of the fare upon which they lived, not the danger even of being turned out of doors, that distressed Bobby; it was that a wretch like Mr. Hardhand could insult and trample upon his mother.  He had just heard him use language to her that made his blood boil with indignation, and he did not, on cool, sober, second thought, regret that he had taken such a decided stand against it.

He cared not for himself.  He could live on a crust of bread and a cup of water from the spring; he could sleep in a barn; he could wear coarse and even ragged clothes; but he could not submit to have his mother insulted, and by such a mean and contemptible person as Mr. Hardhand.