It was plain enough that he meant it then, but Dick said:
“Perhaps you will change your mind after you think it over. I’ll give you till to-night. If you do not agree to pay by that time, I’ll call on your father.”
He stepped aside, and the suspected youth walked to the door, where he turned for a last desperate fling at his accusers. His hands were clenched, his face flushed and his teeth showing as he looked back over his shoulder.
“You’re a soft crowd!” he sneered, with curling lips. “If you were not, you wouldn’t be ready to get down and crawl for a common city cad. Because his father has some money and he is from Boston, you are ready to take anything off him and believe any lie he tells. Oh, you make me sick!”
Then he went out.
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE AUTUMN WOODS.
Don did not attend school that day, for he felt that he could not study, and he wished to be alone. He set out toward the academy, it is true, but kept on, paying no heed to the boys and girls who were gathered in groups about the steps and grounds of the white school building, passed the fenced-in football field, and struck off by a path that led toward the picnic grove in the vicinity of High Bluff.
The fields were showing brown in spots, while here and there a tree was tinted with crimson and gold, the gorgeous banners of advancing autumn. The sky was blue and cloudless, the air clear and still, transmitting distant sounds with a softened distinctness that was agreeable to the ear, while over all seemed to hang the delightful, dreamy languor that is typical of this season in the country.
Crickets were chirping merrily in the brown grass beside the path that led the feet of the unhappy boy toward the picnic grove, but he heard them not, for in his heart there was a tumult that drowned all other sounds. From a farm-yard far across the unrippled harbor sounded the crowing of a cock, mellowed by the distance, but the music of the sound did not seem to reach Don’s ears.
In the heart of the grove he found a mossy bed, upon which he threw himself, giving way to the bitterest reflections. He lay there while the forenoon slipped away. Squirrels chattered in various parts of the grove. A mischievous-looking little chipmunk perched on a stub a few feet away and stared at the reclining lad, observing in an inquiring manner: “Kuk? Kuk? Kuk?” A bluejay lighted on a branch high above him, cocked its tufted head to one side, and shrilly screamed: “Wake up! Get up! Wake up! Come on!” Then, as the lad stirred, he shot away like a blue arrow from a bow, wildly shrieking: “Phe-phay! Phe-phay!”