"We will do for him just what I pray some one might do for my boy, should such misfortune ever become his lot," said the widow tremulously. "He looks like a hard-working, honest boy, I only hope he may come out of his daze in time. If not, we will do our duty--what we might think a burden may be a blessing in disguise."
"You're always 'casting bread on the waters,' Mrs. Fairbanks!" declared Will, in his crisp, offhand way.
To return after many days--light-headed, light-hearted Will Cheever! There are incidents in every boy's life which are the connecting links with all the unknown future, and for Ralph Fairbanks, although he little dreamed it, this was one of them.
[CHAPTER X--THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER]
Will and his friend offered to attend to the broken window in the old factory for Ralph, and the latter was glad to accept the tendered service.
He gave them the price of glass and putty, and a blunt case knife, told them they would find his rule under the window, and as they departed felt assured they would attend to the matter with promptness and dispatch.
Ralph had something on his mind that he felt he could best carry out alone, and after their departure he left his mother quietly sewing in her rocking chair to watch their placidly slumbering guest.
"The boy is a stranger here, of course," Ralph ruminated. "Where did he come from? I hope I will find something among his belongings that will tell."
They were poor belongings, and now hung across a clothes line in the back yard, drying in the warm sunshine.
The coat and trousers were of coarse material, clumsily patched here and there as if by a novice, and Ralph decided did not bear that certain unmistakable trace that tells of home or motherly care.