The boy nodded slowly. It looked as if he were afraid that an admission of the whole truth might further discommode his new friend. “A little bit,” he said, “but I can make out for a while.”
“We'll try a farm-house farther on,” Walton said, with an appreciative glance at the weary face before him. “I'll have to have a cup of coffee or I'll drop in my tracks.”
The sun, now above the tree-tops, was beginning to beat fiercely upon them, and threatening much in the way of heat and sultry temperature later in the day. The activity of his mind and sympathies in behalf of his companion had in a measure dulled Walton's sense of his own condition, but as he trudged along by his companion the whole circumstance of his flight and the far-reaching consequences of his act came upon him anew. The agony within him now seemed to ooze from his body like a material substance, clogging his utterance and shackling his feet.
|THAT morning, about nine o'clock, old Simon Walton rode down to his bank in the one-horse buggy of antiquated type which had come into his possession years before in the foreclosure of a mortgage given by a poor farmer, and which, with its rusty springs and uncouth appearance, was quite in keeping with the character of its present owner.
The bookkeepers were busy at their special duties, and scarcely gave him a glance over their ponderous ledgers as he came in at the front and walked to his desk in the rear. Hanging up his old slouch hat, and seating himself in his big revolving chair, his eyes fell on a stack of letters addressed to him. Rapidly shifting them through his stiff fingers, his attention was drawn to the only one which bore no stamp or postmark. He recognized the writing, and as he held it frowningly before him, his confidential clerk, Toby Lassiter, a colorless and bald young man of medium height, sparse mutton-chop whiskers, and soft, shrinking gray eyes, entered with a slip of paper.
“The cotton quotations you wanted, Mr. Walton,” he said, in the discreet tone he used to the banker on all occasions, lest he might by accident expose to other ears matters his cautious master wished to be kept private.
“Oh yes.” Then, as Lassiter was softly slipping away: “But hold on, Toby! Have you seen Fred this morning?”