“I don’t know exactly,” said Paul, who was not quite sure whether it would be politic to avow his destination.

“Don’t know?” returned the other, evidently surprised.

“Not exactly; I may go to New York.”

“New York!  That’s a great ways off.  Do you know the way there?”

“No, but I can find it.”

“Are you going all alone?” asked his new acquaintance, who evidently thought Paul had undertaken a very formidable journey.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to walk all the way?”

“Yes, unless somebody offers me a ride now and then.”

“But why don’t you ride in the stage, or in the cars?  You would get there a good deal quicker.”

“One reason,” said Paul, hesitating a little, “is because I have no money to pay for riding.”

“Then how do you expect to live?  Have you had any breakfast, this morning?”

“I brought some with me, and just got through eating it when you came along.”

“And where do you expect to get any dinner?” pursued his questioner, who was evidently not a little puzzled by the answers he received.

“I don’t know,” returned Paul.

His companion looked not a little confounded at this view of the matter, but presently a bright thought struck him.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, shrewdly, “if you were running away.”

Paul hesitated a moment.  He knew that his case must look a little suspicious, thus unexplained, and after a brief pause for reflection determined to take the questioner into his confidence.  He did this the more readily because his new acquaintance looked very pleasant.

“You’ve guessed right,” he said; “if you’ll promise not to tell anybody, I’ll tell you all about it.”

This was readily promised, and the boy who gave his name as John Burgess, sat down beside Paul, while he, with the frankness of boyhood, gave a circumstantial account of his father’s death, and the ill-treatment he had met with subsequently.

“Do you come from Wrenville?” asked John, interested.  “Why, I’ve got relations there.  Perhaps you know my cousin, Ben Newcome.”

“Is Ben Newcome your cousin?  O yes, I know him very well; he’s a first-rate fellow.”

“He isn’t much like his father.”

“Not at all.  If he was”—­

“You wouldn’t like him so well.  Uncle talks a little too much out of the dictionary, and walks so straight that he bends backward.  But I say, Paul, old Mudge deserves to be choked, and Mrs. Mudge should be obliged to swallow a gallon of her own soup.  I don’t know but that would be worse than choking.  I wouldn’t have stayed so long if I had been in your place.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Paul, “if it hadn’t been for Aunt Lucy.”

“Was she an aunt of yours?”

“No, but we used to call her so, She’s the best friend I’ve got, and I don’t know but the only one,” said Paul, a little sadly.