Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/1092

268 The young engineer nodded assentingly.

"Well, as I say, I ran across Clark accidentally in my stray wanderings. He and a sickly boy named Ernest Gregg were living in a fixed-over building at Fordham Spur. I seemed to be just the person Clark was waiting for. He hired me to do some work for him. He was planning to get the poor boy, Gregg, his rights."

"Yes, I know about that," observed Ralph.

"Then if you do, I can hurry over things. It seems that when he began to look up Gregg's affairs, he found out that Ernest had a strange hermit of a grandfather, named Abijah Gregg. Ernest's father was an only son. About five years ago the old man discovered a terrible forgery in which he was robbed of over ten thousand dollars. He had reason to believe that Ernest's father and a man named Howard were responsible for it. He disowned his son and all his family, and a month later Ernest's father died, leaving his son a disowned and homeless outcast."

"And what became of Howard?" inquired the interested Ralph.

"He disappeared. Old Gregg became soured at all humanity after that," narrated Zeph; "the more so because he had a profligate nephew who turned out bad. This was the man in jail here now."