CHAPTER X
BRANDON’S ARRIVAL AT THE METROPOLIS
LONG habit had made Uncle Arad Tarr an extremely early riser, and it had been his custom to arouse Brandon as early as half past three or four during the summer months, and never later than five-thirty in winter. On the morning after he had fastened the door of his nephew’s room, however, the old man did not seek to disturb the boy, but rising himself before five he went about the customary duties of the house and barn.
In this work he missed Brandon sadly; but having made up his mind that the boy was bound to leave him any way, old Arad was determined that he should go to the reform school, and therefore he would have to learn to do without his valuable services.
To his unsophisticated mind, it seemed a very simple matter indeed for a powerful local politician like “Square” Holt to send his nephew to the State reformatory institution, “and no questions asked.”
But under our present system of humane laws, and with our enlightened legal executives, an undeserved incarceration in prison or reform school is seldom known—outside of story books. Judge Holt was a large man in his own community (and in his own estimation) but he had never been beyond that community far enough to learn how very small a man he really was.
After the arduous labor of feeding the stock and poultry, drawing water and bringing in wood, old Arad hardly felt equal to either the task of preparing breakfast, or eating the same; but he did at last sit down to what he termed “a cold snack” about seven o’clock.
“That ’ere boy sleeps like a pig,” he muttered, with a groan, twisting about in his chair to get an easy position for his rheumatic limbs. “I wonder he hain’t begun er-kickin’ on th’ door, er suthin’, yit.”
At that moment there was a noise behind him, and turning about he beheld the subject of his thoughts standing in the doorway leading to the floor above.
Uncle Arad gave a shout expressing surprise and anger, and sprang to his feet. Brandon had been surveying him coolly, with a smile on his face, and now he laughed outright.
“Good morning, uncle,” he said.
He was fully dressed in his best suit, hat, overcoat and all, and carried a traveling bag in his hand.
“How—how did ye git aout?” sputtered Uncle Arad, in wonder.
“How did I get out?”
“Yes—haow did ye git aouto’ yer room?” cried the old man.
“I wasn’t in, therefore I didn’t have to get out,” responded Brandon calmly.
“Ye warn’t in?” repeated his bewildered relative.
“That’s what I said. I wasn’t in. When you crawled up stairs last night and took all that trouble with the clothes line, I wasn’t in my room at all. I expected some such delicate attention as that on your part, uncle, so I took the trouble to remove my things to the spare room at the other end of the hall, and slept there.”
The farmer fairly gnashed his teeth in rage.
“Where be yeou goin’?” he demanded, planting himself between his nephew and the door.
“Why, uncle, I thought you knew that,” said Brandon, raising his eyebrows in apparent surprise. “I told you last night that I was going to New York. I haven’t changed my mind since then, though I’ve modified my plans somewhat. It’s such a pleasant morning, I believe I’ll walk down to Rockland, take the stage from there to Hope, and go to town on the train.”
“Yeou will, hey? Wal, I guess not!”
Old Arad backed up against the door as though to guard that way of escape. His lean form was trembling with excitement, and he was really in a pitiable state for so old a man.
“Think not, eh?” said Brandon coolly.
He came into the kitchen and deposited his traveling bag on a chair, and then stepped across the room and took his rifle down from the two hooks upon which it rested.
Old Arad uttered a shout of alarm and darted away from the door to the opposite side of the table.
“Goodness me! would you shoot me?” he gasped, fairly white to his lips.
“Don’t be a fool, uncle,” responded Brandon with asperity, opening the hall door again and bringing in a gun case which had been standing in the corner of the other apartment. “The rifle isn’t loaded, and, besides, what do you suppose I’d want to shoot you for?”
“Oh, you young villain, you!” groaned old Arad, paying for his agile movements of the moment before by several rheumatic twinges.
“Thanks! Well, uncle, I guess I’ll be off. I don’t suppose you’ll shake hands with a fellow?” and Brandon stopped, with his hand on the door latch.
“I’ll have ye a’rested afore ye git ter Rockland!” the old man shouted, shaking his clenched fist at him.
“You’d better not try it,” the boy declared, with flashing eyes.
Arad followed him outside, sputtering.
“Ye’ll live ter rue this day, ye young villain!” he cried. “I’ll show ye no mercy.”
“All right; it’s all the same to me,” Brandon returned, and whistling cheerfully, he went out of the gate and started down the road with his burden of traveling bag and gun case.
It was a beautiful morning, despite the rain of the day before. True, there were puddles of muddy water standing in the road and patches of dirty snow in the fence corners and under the hedges. But these drawbacks did not serve to cloud either the clear azure sky or Brandon’s bright hopes.
Looking back at the old farm house once, before turning the bend in the road, he had a glimpse of old Arad driving furiously out of the yard.
“He is going to see his familiar spirit, Holt,” muttered Don, with a smile, “and lots of good may it do him. I’ll be in town before they catch me, and Judge Ebenezer Holt isn’t anywhere near as big a man in town as he is here. I’ll risk all the harm they can do me now.”
He arrived at Rockland in time for the stage to Hope, and at the latter village took the train for Providence. Neither his uncle nor Holt had appeared, and he made up his mind that he was well rid of them.
Once aboard the cars he settled himself back in his seat, and drew forth the scrap of newspaper which had dropped from the old sailor’s note case the day before. He read it through again carefully.
“I’ve got nearly fifty dollars (wouldn’t uncle be crazy if he knew it?) and although that isn’t a fortune, still it ought to keep me for some time,” he thought. “But, the question is, after I pump all I can out of that Wetherbee, what had I better do?”
He mused a moment in silence, and then took up the connected train of his reflections again.
“Fifty dollars ought to last me quite a spell—and take me quite a way, too. Of course, I can’t hire a boat in New York to go in search of the Silver Swan with it; but I can watch the Hydrographic Office reports, and find out in what general direction the brig’s headed. Then I’ll get as near to her as possible and see—what I shall see!
“I’d give a cent” (probably he would have given a good deal more) “if this Wetherbee was a different sort of a man. It’s a mystery to me how father ever trusted the fellow. I always supposed that father had a keen insight into human nature; but a man will be deceived at times, I suppose.
“But I won’t let this treasure idea keep me from going to work, and working hard, too. If I don’t get the money, why I don’t want to be roaming about the world like Uncle Anson, with nothing to do in life but hunt for wealth. I believe I’ll get a place on some vessel any way, for there’s a good deal of the sailor in me as there was in father. We get it from grandfather’s folks—the Brandons—I suppose.”
He arrived at Providence before noon, and spent the time until evening in looking about the business portion, of the city, and especially about the wharves. Then late in the afternoon he took the cars for New York, arriving in the metropolis at such an hour that to go to a hotel near the station seemed necessary.
Although a country boy by bringing up, Brandon was not easily disturbed by the magnitude of life in the great city. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, and after retiring to his room at the hotel, he went to sleep without one apprehensive thought of what the morrow might bring forth.
“GOODNESS ME! WOULD YOU SHOOT ME?”