TWO BOYS WHO PLANNED TO BECOME GREAT

“So this is Dunhaven?” inquired Jack Benson.

“Ye-es,” slowly responded Jabez Holt, not rising from the chair in which he sat tilted back against the outer wall on the hotel porch.

“It looks like it,” muttered Hal Hastings, under his breath.

“Doesn’t look like a very bustling place, does it?” asked Jack, with a smile, as he set down a black, cloth-covered box on the porch and leisurely helped himself to a chair.

The box looked as though it might contain a camera.  “Tin-type fellers,” thought Holt to himself, and did not form a very high estimate of the two boys, neither of whom was more than sixteen years of age.

Just now, both boys were dusty from long travel on foot, which condition, at a merely first glance, concealed the fact that both were neatly enough, even if plainly, dressed.

“Huh!” was all the response Jabez Holt made to Jack’s pleasant comment.  Hal, however, not in the least discouraged by a reception that was not wholly flattering, set down a box not unlike Jack’s, and also something hidden in a green cloth cover that suggested a camera tripod.  Hal helped himself to one of the two remaining chairs on the porch of the little hotel.

“Takin’ pictures?” asked Jabez Holt, after a pause spent in chewing at a tooth-pick.

“Yes, some of the time,” Jack assented.  “It helps out a bit when two fellows without rich fathers take a notion to travel.”

“I s’pose so,” grunted Jabez.  He was not usually considered, by his fellow-townsmen, a disagreeable fellow, but a hotel keeper must always preserve a proper balance of suspicion when dealing with strangers, and especially strangers who follow callings that do not commonly lead to prosperity.  Probably “Old Man” Holt, as he was known, remembered a few experiences with the tribe of itinerant photographers.  At any rate he did not mean to make the mistake of being too cordial with these young representatives of the snap-shot art.

“Is there any business around here?” asked Jack, after awhile.

“Oh, there’s a Main Street, back uptown, that has some real pretty homes,” admitted the hotel keeper, “an’ some likely-lookin’ cross streets.  Dunhaven ain’t an awful homely town, as ye’ll see after you’ve walked about a bit.”

“But is there any business here?” insisted Hal Hastings, patiently.

“I guess maybe you’re business photografters, then?” suggested the hotel keeper.

“What kinds of business are there here?” asked Jack.

Jabez Holt cast away a much-mangled toothpick and placed another in his mouth before he replied, with a chuckle: 

“Well, I reckon about the only business here that the town is doing any talkin’ about at present is one that don’t want no photografters around.”

“And what may that business be?” persisted Jack.