“What are you doing?  What do you mean by saying you won’t deliver my groceries and do what I tell you?”

Panting with excitement, Bob stood like some animal at bay, his eyes flashing defiance, one hand tightly doubled up, the other clasping his treasures in the pocket where he had thrust them.

“I mean I am going West.  I won’t be treated as you have treated me any longer.”

For a moment, as he heard the amazing announcement of his ward, Mr. Dardus stood staring at him in silence, and then broke into a mocking laugh.

“So you’re going West, are you?  That is a good one.  Why, you couldn’t even get across the river to Jersey City.  It takes money, money, my boy, to travel, and you haven’t a cent.  And yet you’re going West!  That is a good one.  Do you think the trains will carry you for nothing, just for the pleasure of having you travel on them?” and the grocer indulged himself in another burst of laughter at what he considered his keen wit.

But the next words of his ward soon drove all mirth from his soul.

“I expect you to give me enough money to carry me to Oklahoma City from what my father left me.  When I get settled out there, I will let you know, and you can send me the rest of the money which was entrusted to you for me.  If I took it with me, I might get robbed.”

When the merciless old man recovered his breath, he exclaimed: 

“What do you mean about the money your father left for you?  Don’t you know he didn’t have a cent?  Don’t you know that if I hadn’t taken pity on you, fool that I was—­but your father did me a favor once, and so I thought I could repay it by taking you—­that you would have been sent to an orphan asylum?  And this is the return I get.  Here I’ve spent my hard-earned money for twelve years to buy you food and clothing, and yet you dare to say that I have money for you which your father left.  I never heard of such ingratitude.”

“I know that you are not telling the truth,” retorted Bob.  “I have a letter my father wrote, saying that I was to open it when I was ten years old, in which he said that he had given you five thousand dollars to have me educated.”

“What nonsense!  What an outrage!” exclaimed the grocer, though Bob’s statement had caused his face to become more than usually ashen-hued.  “I’ve a mind to thrash you for saying such a thing.  Me have five thousand dollars of yours!  I never heard anything so preposterous!”

“I tell you, you have the money.  Here’s the letter that says so,” retorted Bob.  And, as he spoke, he drew his hand from his pocket, disclosing to the uneasy gaze of his guardian an envelope yellow with age, worn and soiled from much handling, but upon which was the writing which he recognized, all too well, as that of Horace Chester, Bob’s father.

For an instant the grocer glowered at the boy and the letter, and then his shrewd mind, suggesting a way out of the embarrassing predicament in which the boy had placed him, he exclaimed: