CHAPTER I.GEORGE AND HIS UNCLE.
“Well, George, it is either that or the poorhouse.”
“There’s where I differ with you, Uncle Ruben.”
“You are an ungrateful scamp. Here I am, offerin’ you a good home—”
“I know you offer me shelter, food and clothing, but you can’t give me a home. I shall never have one again, now that my mother is dead.”
“And your father in prison for stealin’.”
“You might have spared me that, Uncle Ruben. I know he is in prison, and there is no need that you and everybody else should constantly remind me of it. I am in no way to blame for what he did.”
“Mebbe you hain’t. But can’t you see how it’s a hurtin’ of you? Who is thereabout here that would be willin’ to hire the son of a thief?”
“I don’t care to talk to you now, Uncle Ruben. Leave me alone for a day or two, and then I will tell you what I have decided to do.”
“Might as well decide now as any time. I reckon you know that this house an’ everything what’s into it belongs to me, don’t you? I didn’t say nothing to your mother about it when she was alive, ’cause she was my brother’s wife, and I didn’t want to pester her; but now—”
“I know you didn’t say anything about the mortgage, but I notice that you always demanded the interest the moment it was due. You took it, too, when you knew that my mother didn’t have money enough in the house to buy a sack of flour.”
“Well, it was my due, an’ I wanted it.”
George Edwards uttered an exclamation of disgust, and, leaning his elbows on the railing that surrounded the porch, he rested his chin on his hands, and gazed off towards the distant hills; while Uncle Ruben pacedup and down in front of the house, thrashing his cowhide boots with his riding whip, and taking a survey of the buildings and grounds that were soon to come into his possession by virtue of the mortgage he held upon them.
He was a very mean man, this Ruben Edwards—the meanest man in all that country, so everybody said—and you would have known it the minute you looked at him. He loved money, and not unfrequently resorted to questionable means in order to get it.
He owned several farms in the neighborhood, and was now congratulating himself on having secured another. True, it was not much of an acquisition. All he saw, as he looked about him, were a few acres of stony, unproductive land, a small, unpainted dwelling-house, and a few outbuildings, all of which showed signs of decay, in spite of the efforts the industrious George had made to keep them in repair.
It was no wonder that George did not want to talk to his uncle on this particular morning. He did not believe that there wasa boy in the world who was so utterly miserable as he was, or who had so little to live for.
He had always been looked down on and shunned by the boys of his acquaintance on account of the conduct of his father, who was one of the village vagabonds; and, since the latter had been shut up in the penitentiary for breaking into a store and stealing money that he was too lazy to work for, poor George had had a hard time of it. No one in that village would have anything to do with him.
He left school and tried to find something to do in order to support his mother, who was an invalid; but nobody needed his services.
“There’s work enough to be done,” he often said to his mother, when he came home from his long tramps, weary and dusty; “but they won’t give me a chance. They are all suspicious of me. But never mind; you shan’t suffer. I have long been thinking of something; and, since no one will hire me, I shall go into business for myself.”
And he did, just as soon as he could make the necessary arrangements.
The people who would not let him saw their wood, because they were afraid he would steal something, did not refuse to purchase the delicious trout and yellow perch that he peddled from door to door, and neither did the luscious berries he brought in from distant fields and pastures ever remain long on his hands.
He made money; but he often became disheartened, and angry, too, when he drew a contrast between his circumstances and those of the boys about him, and then all that was needed was a smile or a word of praise from his mother to bring all his courage and determination back to him again. But now she was gone—the only friend he ever had. She had been dead just a week, and George was lonely, indeed.
He wanted to get out into the woods by himself, and stay there, and he was already making preparations to take a final leave of the house which he could no longer call his home, when he saw his Uncle Ruben’s oldclay-bank pacer coming down the road, and Uncle Ruben himself in the saddle.
George was not at all pleased to see him, for he knew pretty nearly what the man would have to say to him.
“’Taint no great shakes of a place,” said Uncle Ruben, after running his eye over the house and its surroundings. “But mebbe I can sell it for enough to save myself. Then you won’t go home with me an’ work for your board and clothes?”
“No, I won’t,” replied George promptly.
He did not thank his relative for his offer, for he knew the object he had in making it.
George was very strong for a boy of his age, and fully capable of doing a man’s work in the field; and he knew that his services there would be worth much more than his board and clothes. So did Uncle Ruben; but the latter thought it would be a good thing if he could induce his nephew to agree to his proposition, for it would be a saving to him of twenty or thirty dollars a month.
“If you will stay with me till you are twenty-one years old, I will give you a yokeof oxen an’ a good suit of clothes to begin life with,” added Uncle Ruben. “That’s customary, you know.”
“I know it is,” answered George. “But if I live to see the age of twenty-one, I shall have more than a yoke of worthless old oxen and a suit of shoddy clothes,Itell you!”
Uncle Ruben winced a little at this.
“I saw the outfit you gave to one of your bound boys, who had served you faithfully for six long years,” continued George. “The oxen were not worth the powder to blow them up, and the clothes fell to pieces in less than a month. You can’t palm any of your old trash off on me. I can do better.”
“I don’t see how. Whose goin’ to hire you?”
“I don’t ask any one to hire me. I’ve got a business of my own that enabled me to support my mother, and to pay your interest on the very day it became due.”
“But you shan’t foller it no longer,” said Uncle Ruben, decidedly. “Boys like you don’t know what’s best for themselves. Youneed a guardeen, an’ I shall ask the selectmen to have you bound out to me until you are of age.”
“I don’t care if you do,” replied George, in a voice choked with indignation. “Having no property, I do not need a guardian, and I won’t have one, either. I can take care of myself.”
“I know what you want to do,” said Uncle Ruben, with a sneer. “You’re too scandalous lazy to work for a livin’, an’ you want to go back to that shanty of yours in the woods, an’ live there, trappin’ and fishin’, jest for all the world like a wild Injun. But that ain’t a respectable way to live—that way ain’t—an’ I shan’t consent to it.”
“I haven’t asked your consent. I have a right to make an honest living in any way I can, and I intend to exercise that right. I am not too lazy to work; but, as you say, there is no one about here who will give me anything to do. I am not going to starve and go ragged, however, for all that.”
“Be you goin’ to stay up there in the woods all your life?” inquired Uncle Ruben.
“No, I am not. I want to be something better than a hermit. I intend to stay up there until I can save money enough to take me to some place where I am not known, and then I shall make a new start.”
“Well, we’ll wait until we hear what the selectmen have to say about that,” answered Uncle Ruben, with a grin and a wink which seemed to indicate that he felt sure of his ground. “Mebbe they’ll think, as I do, that it’s best for you to go with me, so that you can have somebody what knows something to take care on you. You can stay here till I can have time to go an’ see ’em.”
“I don’t care to stay in this house another night,” replied George, quickly. “I was getting ready to leave it when I saw you coming. If you have got through talking, I’ll go now.”
So saying, George disappeared through the open door, and, when he came out again, he carried over his shoulder a heavy bundle, at which Uncle Ruben gazed with suspicion.
“Everything in here belongs to me, and was purchased with money that I earnedmyself,” said the boy, who understood the look. “If you don’t believe it—”
Here George threw the bundle down upon the porch within reach of his uncle’s hand.
But the latter did not offer to touch it. Mean as he was known to be, and anxious as he was to secure every article about the house that would clear him a dime or two at public auction, he could not bring himself to make an examination of his nephew’s bundle.
“Well, then,” said the latter, once more raising his property to his shoulder, “I will bid you good-by.”
He hurried out of the yard, and up the road toward the hills, while Uncle Ruben stood in front of the porch and shook his riding-whip at him.
“That’s a powerful bad boy,” said he to himself, “an’ he’s goin’ to be a no-account vagabond, like his father was. But there’s a heap of strength in him, an’ it’s a great pity that he should waste it by foolin’ about in the woods, instead of puttin’ it on my farm, where it would do some good. He’d oughter be taken in hand, that boy ought.”
Uncle Ruben gave emphasis to this thought by hitting his boots a vicious cut with his whip, and then he went into the house, to see what he could find there.