It was a hard thing for Leslie to keep away from the Horner home these days. He had much in common with Dick to talk over, what with the progress of the black-face farce; the wonderful scheme Dick was carrying out looking to the bringing together of old Deacon Nocker and his son’s little family; and now, last of all, the mystery hanging over the returned Silas Langhorne.
Leslie was particularly interested in the weary wanderer who had spent the better part of his life in the endeavor to coax fortune to pour her favors into his lap, only to meet with final defeat.
“Even if he is Dick’s real uncle, which I doubt a whole lot,” he often told himself, “think of the nerve of him coming here to hang on to those poor people like a barnacle does to a ship’s keel. Why, with another mouth to feed, they’ll go hungry more’n a few times, if the winter’s as hard as they say it’s going to be. I tell you it doesn’t look right to me; and I’ve just got to expose that old fraud.”
So Leslie, in pursuance of his determination, was over with Dick on the night that followed the encounter at the gymnasium.
Dick was induced to read a little more of his farce while the two of them sat in his den, and Leslie again laughed heartily over the humorous way the writer expressed himself, as well as at the jokes he worked in between the jolly songs and choruses.
“Don’t you dare get cold feet about this thing, Dick,” he told his chum sternly, when the other absolutely refused to read any more that night, as supper was nearly ready, and Leslie had agreed to eat with them. “I tell you it’s a peach, and Nat, for all his boasting, isn’t going to have a show-in.”
Of course, Dick liked to hear that sort of thing, for he really needed all sorts of encouragement to bolster up his drooping spirits. That golden prize hung temptingly before his eyes, but he feared he was doomed never to clutch it; although already he had figured out how many things besides a suit of new clothes it would afford him that winter.
The boys went in to supper when the summons came. Silas was still in evidence. He looked considerably better, now that he had washed up, and brushed the dust from his shabby clothes, which were pretty nearly all his possessions, for he had only been carrying a little bundle done up in a gunny-sack when Dick first met him.
“I ought to be goin’ on my way by this time,” Silas was remarking, as they sat at the table and partook of the humble fare, which, however, was plentiful enough for that occasion; “though I must say I’m terribly disappointed at not hearin’ from my old side partner, Joe Shepard, down in New York City, in answer to the letter I sent him.”
Mrs. Horner shook her head at hearing that.