“HAND ’em out here, I say,” repeated Godfrey, “an’ don’t waste no time in thinkin’ about it, nuther!”

“You’ve turned highwayman, have you?” said the boy, recovering his power of speech by an effort. “Well, you shan’t have the money. I have use for it myself, and I could easily use more if I had it.”

“So can I use it,” said Godfrey, “an’ I’m going to have it, too. Yer mighty good to yerself, ain’t ye? Yer going off to yer home, fifteen hundred miles away, an’ leave me to bear the brunt of this business as best I can. But I ain’t agoin’ to stay nuther. I’m goin’ away, too. Hand ’em out here!”

“And what shall I do?” asked Clarence, who began to grow alarmed when he saw how determined Godfrey was. “How shall I get home without any money to pay my way?”

“Hand ’em out here, I say, an’ be quick about[Pg 269] it,” answered Godfrey, making an effort to put his hand into the boy’s pocket. “I don’t care how ye get hum. Ye got me into this scrape an’ ye must pay my way outen it; that’s how the thing stands.”

“I’ll not go home at all,” exclaimed Clarence, doubling himself up and resisting to the utmost all Godfrey’s efforts to force his hand into his pocket. “I’ll stay and see this thing out on purpose to have you arrested.”

“I shall be miles back in the swamp in less’n an hour,” replied Godfrey, becoming enraged at the boy’s opposition and throwing him flat on his back in the road. “I’ve got my rifle with me, an’ the fust man that follows me will come to his death!”

Clarence did not doubt this in the least, for the expression on Godfrey’s face told him that he was terribly in earnest. He was like a child in the angry man’s grasp, but knowing how much depended on the small stock of money he had in his pocket he fought desperately to retain possession of it, but all to no purpose. Godfrey rolled him over, face downward, and holding him fast with one hand, quickly found the pocket-book with the other and pulled it out. He was about to examine it to make sure that the money was in it, but just then his ear caught the[Pg 270] clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the hard road. He listened to it a moment, and then jumped up and ran into the thicket from which he had just emerged; while Clarence, being equally anxious to avoid observation, scrambled to his feet with all haste and plunged into an opposite thicket. Almost overcome with the violence of his exertions he lay flat upon the ground, behind a convenient log, until the horseman came in sight, and then quickly ducked his head and held his breath. It was his uncle. He passed swiftly along, looking neither to the right nor left, and disappeared around a bend in the road.

“Whew!” panted Clarence. “Wasn’t that a narrow escape? What if I had waited to tell him about the robbery, as I at first meant to do? This is a little ahead of any experience I have had yet.”

Clarence looked up and down the road to make sure that the coast was clear, and then came out and crossed over to the opposite side to look for Godfrey. He was not to be seen. Clarence listened intently, but could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind through the branches of the trees. He called Godfrey’s name as loudly as he dared, but no answer was returned.

“He’s gone,” thought the boy, “and so are my[Pg 271] twenty dollars; and here I am, two miles from the landing, afoot and alone. I wish I dared stay and have that fellow hunted up and punished. But I’d much rather lose the money than face my uncle after he finds out what I have done. I declare, I’m a nice-looking fellow to go among folks,” he added, looking down at his coat, which was sadly soiled and torn. “And the worst of it is, I shall continue to look this way for some days to come.”

Clarence thumped his clothes energetically to knock the dust out of them, settled his hat firmly on his head and set out at his best pace in the direction of Rochdale. He ran almost all the way, and the last half mile he made in remarkably quick time considering the circumstances, for he heard the Emma Deane whistle as she approached the landing. When he turned into the street on which the post-office stood, he was almost ready to drop with fatigue, but he was obliged to run faster than ever, for he heard the bell ring, and he knew that that was a signal to the crew to stand by the lines. He hoped there would be no one at the landing to see him, but he did not know the habits of the planters living in the vicinity. They were out in full force, and Clarence, as he dashed through them with his hat in his hand and[Pg 272] the perspiration streaming from his face, excited no little astonishment, as he knew by the remarks he heard on every side. He staggered up the staging, and unable to go a step farther, sat down on the stairs that led to the boiler-deck, and panted loudly. The mates of the boat and the shipping clerk thought they recognised him, but were not quite sure about it; and that was not to be wondered at, for he looked very unlike the dashing, fashionably-dressed young fellow who had spent his money so freely for ale and cigars on the down trip.

“Is this you, Gordon?” exclaimed the clerk.

“It’s what is left of me,” gasped Clarence.

“Why, how did you ever get into this fix? Your clothes are torn——”

“I know,” interrupted Clarence. “Wait until I recover my breath, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Clarence reached the steamer just in time; for, as he sank panting and exhausted upon the stairs, the lines were cast off, and in five minutes more the Emma Deane was on her way up the river. The clerk superintended the getting out of the freight that was to be put off at the next landing, and then came and sat down beside Clarence, who, by this time, began to feel a little more like himself.

Clarence Escapes on the “Emma Deane.”

[Pg 273]“Am I not a pretty looking object?” said the latter.

“Well, I’ve seen you when I thought you looked better,” answered the clerk, with a laugh. “Been taking a rough and tumble with somebody ashore?”

“No,” replied Clarence.

“You left your baggage, didn’t you?”

“I have none. I am only going to Cairo on business for my uncle. I left home on a skittish young horse, that I was to leave at the landing until my uncle could send for him, but he did not bring me all the way. He threw me up there in the woods, and dragged me about twenty yards with my foot in the stirrup, before I could free myself. But I had no idea I was so badly used up,” said Clarence, rising to his feet and pulling off his coat. “If I had, I should have gone back and made a new start with another suit of clothes. I say, haven’t you an extra coat to sell? The rest of my clothes will do until I reach Cairo.”

“Perhaps I can accommodate you,” said the clerk. “Come up to my room, and after you have taken a wash and a brush you’ll look better.”

Clarence accompanied the clerk to his room in Texas (that is the name given to the upper cabin in[Pg 274] river steamers), and after he had bathed his hands and face, and given his clothes a thorough brushing he proceeded to make an estimate of the damages he had received. He decided that his trowsers, boots and vest would pass muster, and so would his shirt and collar, although they were both pretty badly rumpled; but the coat was torn beyond all repair, and was fit only for somebody’s rag-bag. The clerk thought so too, and took down from a nail in his room a coat which he said he didn’t need, and which Clarence might wear and welcome if he were only going on to Cincinnati; but as he was to stop off at Cairo, perhaps he had better buy it. Clarence thought now that he would have played his game a little sharper if he had said nothing about stopping at Cairo; but, in order to make the story he had yet to tell appear reasonable, he was obliged to hold to what he had already said.

“Unfortunately I am not going to Cincinnati,” said he. “My business will take me no farther than Cairo. What’s the coat worth?”

“Well, I don’t think five dollars would be too much; do you?”

“O, no. I’ll willingly give you that.”

Clarence laid down the coat, thrust his hand into[Pg 275] his pocket, and then stopped and looked at the clerk, while a blank look settled on his face. After standing motionless for a moment, he began with frantic haste to empty all his pockets. This done he sank down on the clerk’s bed, his hands dropped by his side, and he looked dejected enough.

“Is it gone?” asked the clerk, who readily understood this pantomime.

“Yes, sir, it’s gone—my pocket-book with an even hundred dollars in it. Now, am I not in a nice fix? How am I going to pay my fare to Cairo and back?”

“It must have dropped out of your pocket when your horse threw you,” said the clerk.

“That’s just the way it happened, and every cent I had was in it, too.”

Clarence looked up and saw that the clerk’s gaze was fastened on his watch that lay on the bed; and that same watch, which was a birth-day present from his mother, was the boy’s sole dependence now. When he was passing through the brier-patch, on his way to the cellar where his cousin was confined, the long chain, which dangled from his button-hole, was constantly catching on the bushes, and Clarence had unhooked it and put it into his pocket with the watch. Probably that was all that saved the time-piece, for[Pg 276] had Godfrey Evans seen the chain, he might have taken that and the watch as well as the money.

“Do you suppose there is any one on board who will advance me anything on that?” asked Clarence, brightening up as if the idea had just occurred to him.

“I was thinking about it,” replied the clerk. “You might try our chief engineer. He’s always trading watches when he thinks he can make any thing by it.”

“I don’t want to sell the watch,” said Clarence. “I only want to borrow some money on it. I shall return to Rochdale at once, and by the time you come down again, I shall be ready to redeem it.”

“I understand,” said the clerk. “The engineer is in his room now.”

“Then let’s try him at once. Come with me, will you? You know him better than I do.”

The clerk showed Clarence the way into the engineer’s room, where that officer, having just come off watch, was taking his usual forenoon nap. He greeted Clarence cordially—he had smoked more than one cigar at the boy’s expense during the down trip—and listened patiently to the story he had to tell. He examined the watch and said he would[Pg 277] advance fifty dollars on it, provided the owner would be ready to redeem it the next time the Emma Deane stopped at Rochdale. This Clarence readily promised to do; so the money was paid at once, the officer pocketed the watch, and the boy went out feeling as if a mountain had been removed from his shoulders. He gave the clerk five dollars for his coat, paid his fare to Cairo, and still had left a sum of money sufficiently large to take him home, provided he did not spend too much for cigars and ale. Half an hour later he was sitting on the boiler deck with his chair tilted back, his feet on the railing, a cigar between his teeth, and looking as happy and contented as though he had never known a moment’s trouble in his life.

“Things don’t look quite as dark as they did,” said he, throwing back his head and watching the smoke as it ascended from his cigar. “I didn’t lose anything by making friends of the officers of this boat on the down trip. Now that I am safely out of the scrape, I’d give something to know what is going on down there at the plantation. Forty thousand dollars? The last chance I shall ever have to make a fortune has slipped through my fingers; and all through Don’s interference. He deserved just what[Pg 278] he got, and I hope it will teach him to mind his own business.”

During the journey homeward this was the burden of the boy’s reflections. He knew that by his conduct he had destroyed his chance of living on intimate or even friendly terms with his uncle’s family, but for that he cared not; he scarcely even thought of it. If he had only found the barrel, and received his share of the contents, he imagined he would have been supremely happy. He reached home in safety, and of course his parents were very much surprised to see him. He told his mother the whole truth, keeping back nothing, and left her to tell his father. Mr. Gordon did not have much to say until he had had time to write to his brother in Mississippi. What sort of an answer he received to his letter, Clarence never knew; but one bright morning, shortly after the letter came, he was ordered to be ready to start for New York at four o’clock that afternoon. Then he knew that his father’s patience was all exhausted, and that he was to be placed where he would be controlled by an iron hand. Entreaties and promises of better behavior in future were alike unavailing. To New York he went, and his father accompanied him. Mr. Gordon came back alone,[Pg 279] and the next time anybody heard from Claren............