It told him that all along Clegg had tricked him into believing that he—Clegg—was breaking the rules of the institution when he led Joshua to the roof of nights and schooled him in astronomy. Beaver Clegg’s department had been virtually his to regulate as he saw fit, and if he chose to take a boy from bed and teach him on the roof at night it was the concern of no one but himself. Thus had the old instructor inveigled Joshua into mastering studies which were distasteful to him. Thus had he tried him in the furnace to find out whether his love for science was genuine, and one which was worth much sacrifice.
Tears threatened to deluge Joshua’s eyes when he read the note, and the flood broke when he was told that Beaver Clegg had willed to him his telescope and books and telescopic photographs, and the clippings of over twenty painstaking years.
And so it came about that Joshua Cole went before the board again and asked for his rights in the matter of parole. Whereupon the board decided to pardon him. And at the age of twenty, a quiet, serious, unworldly youth with an ascetic face and kindly gray-blue eyes, he left the House of Refuge, his home for over six years, with his telescope over his shoulder.
But he did not go home. Lester had long since left the old house on Grant Avenue and was working in a shoe store, living alone in rented quarters. Only the father was there, with the faithful Zida to minister to his fickle wants when he was in from a trip. Joshua had heard that John Cole was playing the races and drinking more than ever, and he had no desire to see him. But he was penniless, so he called on Lester for aid, which was refused. The younger brother was earning barely enough to keep himself, he said, and he looked upon Joshua with little favor, referring often in his speech to his brother’s sojourn in the House of Refuge and snickering the name of Tony.
There seemed no friend to turn to in his dilemma, and Joshua, confined to his studies for so many years, imprisoned and inexperienced in worldly matters, decided to carry out the boyish plan that he had evolved when he and Lester waited in the swampy lot for Slinky Dawson to come along with the note that told of his disgrace at school. Out there in the West somewhere was the girl that he never had forgotten—Madge Mundy of the frizzly red-gold hair and the Oriental-topaz eyes. He would find her.
So, with the exception of his telescope, he left in Lester’s keeping all of the precious things bequeathed to him by Beaver Clegg; and the night of the same day that he came from the House of Refuge he sought the freight yards under cover of darkness.
Three times, as he stole along looking for an empty boxcar in a train that evidently was about to move out, he imagined that somebody was following him. And now he found his car and pushed his telescope through a side door. He scrambled in after it, closed the door, and stood silent in total darkness. Soon the train began to move, but whether or not it was westward-bound the new recruit in Vagabondia had no means of knowing. It would take him away from Hathaway at all events, and for this he longed, since the city of his birth had showed him little but unkindness.
And on top of the car in which Joshua rode the figure of a young man lay flat, awaiting the coming of a brakeman over the running boards, whose lantern he saw swinging up toward the locomotive. His name was Felix Wolfgang, and he was of Norwegian extraction, but in the House of Refuge his number had been Twenty-three forty-four.
CHAPTER XI
AN OFFER OF PARTNERSHIP
HAD Joshua Cole been aware that the other tramp who rode on top of the train had “squared things with the brakeman,” he would not have been so surprised at the long ride he made without being ordered off by some train official. But he knew only that he was not disturbed throughout the entire night, as he lay in one corner on the hard floor, his head pillowed by an arm that ached when he awoke from time to time.