“Ho, oh, then you missed ’im! By ’ow much? Tell me, ’Iram Riles. ’Ow much? A foot?”
The man had drawn himself into a half sitting posture, his back against the wall, his body half through the trap door, his arms outstretched upon the floor. His fingers trembled, and his lips twitched as he tried to speak. He was a poor ghost of the strong man Wilfred had always known.
“Listen, boy,” he said at length. “I figured on fixin’ him, but I didn’t. I waited for him to come out of the store, and I threw it at him, but in the darkness I missed.”
“Han’ then yuh went in hand robbed the syfe,” completed Wilfred.
“You lie!” shouted Riles, suddenly regaining his self-possession. “It’s all lies! What I told you was a lie! You hear me?”
He had risen on to his feet, and, with arms outstretched, was slowly approaching the boy. Wilfred read the change, and saw that the man who had narrowly escaped committing murder was still capable of it. But the lad had long been accustomed to protect himself, and his cunning did not desert him at the critical moment. Quick as a flash he seized the burning lantern and hurled it in the face of his assailant. For an instant all was darkness; then a tongue of flame shot across the floor and leapt up the oil-saturated night garments of Riles. With a scream the man, now a blazing torch, plunged down the opening to the floor below and rushed into the outer air. His wife, awakened by Wilfred’s shriek a few moments before, showed her presence of mind by wrapping Riles in a blanket, which extinguished the blaze before he was seriously injured. Wilfred took the opportunity to steal silently out of the building. Riles was swearing terribly as the boy slipped by the corner and disappeared in the darkness.
Wilfred’s plans were soon laid. Bundling up such clothing as he had been able to snatch up in the moment allowed, he waited a short time to see if the house would take fire. It did not, somewhat to his disappointment. To return to Riles would, he knew, be to court disaster. He had a very different purpose now in view. Of late he had been reading the papers at Grants’ in the evenings, and had learned that the Government of Canada was prepared to give a quarter section to any man who would live on it and establish a farm. It was a great day when his poor, narrow imagination first made the leap that supposed him—Wilfred Vickery, Barnardo boy—the owner of a farm in his own right. But when the supposition had once been made it grew upon him with a resistless fascination. He was now eighteen. The problem of getting West was a small thing to him. The harvest season was approaching, and he could work. He had been nursing this great thought for weeks, and now, at this moment, it became evident that he must strike out and boldly grapple with destiny. And he had another purpose, of which he scarcely dared think, but which was in reality the foundation of his whole desire.