“I never was so absorbed in a story in my life, my dear fellow.  Go on, please.”

“Well, over yonder, not far from the end of the trestle, lived an old man—­ but never mind the name.  At any rate he was sort of a miser, or rather he had lots of money which he never spent and when he died he left it all to my mother.”

“You’ve left something out I think,” interrupted Mr. Keeler, and there was a smile about the corners of his mouth that caused Roy to flush deeply.

CHAPTER XI

 Mr. Charles Keeler

“Well, why don’t you go on?” asked Mr. Keeler, as Roy paused.

“You’ve heard something about the affair.  I can see you have by the way you look.  Please tell me what it was.”

“Only a very little,” was the reply.  “As I was crossing the trestle in the train a while ago I heard a lady behind me telling a gentleman who was with her that this was the place where Roy Pell rescued the old miser.  So now you see I know who you are, but I hope that won’t make any difference about your telling the story.  You left off in the most interesting place.  It would be worse than the serials in the weekly papers, for I couldn’t look forward to getting the continuation next Saturday.”

Roy smiled and then said “All right, you’ve promised not to use it unless I give you leave, you know.  But I don’t want you to think of me as a regular hero because I lugged that old man off the bridge.  There would have been plenty of time for me to have run down to Burdock and stopped the train and got help there, but I really didn’t think of it.”

“Oh, no, that isn’t the part I’m interested in at all.  What I want to know is the reason you seemed so glum over having come into a fortune.  Was it much, may I inquire?”

“About half a million, but I haven’t been one mite happier since we’ve had it.  In the first place my oldest brother has been sick ever since.  We don’t know what’s the matter with him and he won’t give up his law business and go away for rest as mother wants him to.  He says he has got too much to do looking after the investing of her money.  Then there’s Rex, he wants so many things that he can’t settle on any one.  He got a bicycle almost the first thing, and now he’s tired of it and wants a horse, and Jess says there’s no good of getting that because we ought to go to Europe and take Syd with us.”

“And Eva, she wants to go to Vassar, and mother doesn’t want to give her up, and the worst of it all is we’ve sold the place and we are going to move into the city next month, and I hate to leave Marley, although the rest all want to go.  So we’re all pulling different ways, and nobody a bit happy, for if he’s got what he wanted he has to remember that it’s what the rest didn’t want.  I had a fling out about the whole thing just before I left the house and I came down to grumble to the creek.  Why, that’s funny!”