After they had left the store, the oldest boy gave Oscar and Alfred, each, one of the pocket-knives, to pay them for their trouble, as he expressed it.  They were much pleased with their present, and felt very well satisfied with their afternoon’s adventure.  They were a little surprised, however, that their new friends should think it necessary to invest so largely in weapons of defence; and on their hinting this surprise, the boy who purchased the articles said, with a careless, business-like air: 

“O, we ’ve got to travel a good many hundred miles, and there ’s no knowing what rough fellows we may fall in with.  But give me a good revolver and dirk, and I bet I will take care of myself, anywhere.”

The seriousness with which this brave language was uttered by a boy scarcely yet in his teens, would have made even Alfred and Oscar smile, but for the consciousness of the new knives in their pockets.

It was now quite dark, and on coming to a street which led more directly towards his home, Oscar left the other boys, with the promise of seeing them again Monday morning.

CHAPTER V.

THE YOUNG TRAVELLERS.

The Sabbath came, and a fine autumnal day it was.  Oscar’s thoughts were with Alfred, and the boys whose acquaintance he had made the afternoon previous; but there was little chance for him to join them in their walks on that day.  He could not absent himself from church or the Sunday-school, without his parents’ knowledge; and Mr. Preston had always decidedly objected to letting the children stroll about the streets on the Sabbath.  Oscar felt so uneasy, however, that in the afternoon, a little while before meeting-time, he left the house slyly, while his father was upstairs, and walked around to Alfred’s.  But he saw nothing of the boys, and was in his accustomed seat in the church when the afternoon services commenced.

The next morning, Oscar rose earlier than usual, and as soon as he could despatch his breakfast, he hurried over to the hotel.  The travellers had concluded to defer their journey one day longer, that they might have a better opportunity to see Boston; and when Oscar approached them, they were trying to persuade Alfred to stay away from school, and accompany them in their rambles.  They immediately extended the same invitation to Oscar.  Both he and Alfred felt very much inclined to accede to their proposition, but they were pretty sure that it would be useless to ask their parents’ consent to absent themselves from school for such a purpose.  The point to be settled was, whether it would be safe to play truant for the day.  Seeing that they hesitated, the oldest boy, whose name was Joseph, began to urge the matter still more earnestly.

“What are you afraid of?” he said; “come along, it’s no killing affair to stay away from school just for one day.  You can manage so that nobody will know it; and if they should find it out, it won’t make any difference a hundred years hence.  Come, now, I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do; if you two will go around with us to-day, I ’ll give you a quarter of a dollar apiece.”