Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/216

Rh mouth, and said he'd made up his mind to go West, and he'd like to set off at once.

"Father said again, very good, but first he had a little account to settle with him, and he took out of his pocket a paper, where he had jotted down as far as he could, every quart of oats, and every bag of grain, and every quarter of a dollar of market money that Jacobs had defrauded him of. Father said the fellow turned all the colors of the rainbow, for he thought he had covered up his tracks so cleverly that he would never be found out. Then father said, 'Sit down, Jacobs, for I have got to have a long talk with you.' He had him there about an hour, and when he finished, the fellow was completely broken down. Father told him that there were just two courses in life for a young man to take, and he had gotten on the wrong one. He was a young, smart fellow, and if he turned right around now, there was a chance for him. If he didn't, there was nothing but the State's prison ahead of him, for he needn't think he was going to gull and cheat all the world, and never be found out. Father said he'd give him all the help in his power, if he had his word that he'd try to be an honest man. Then he tore up the paper, and said there was an end of his indebtedness to him.

"Jacobs is only a young fellow, twenty-three or there-about, and father says he sobbed like a baby. Then, without looking at him, father gave an account of his afternoon's drive, just as if he was talking to himself. He said, that Pacer never to his knowledge had been on that road before, and yet he seemed perfectly familiar with it, and that he stopped and turned all ready to leave again quickly, instead of going up to the door, and how he looked over his shoulder and started on a run down the lane, the minute father's foot was in the cutter again.