"It was a grand thing that you found your folks—and your fortune," said Roger.
"Yes, and I am thankful from the bottom of my heart."
The three boys entered the deserted house, and Dave showed the way around. There was the same little cot on which he had been wont to stretch his weary limbs after a hard day's work in the fields, and there were the same simple cooking utensils with which he had prepared many a meal for himself and the old professor. Conditions certainly had improved wonderfully, and for the time being Dave forgot his trouble with Aaron Poole. No one could again call him "a poorhouse nobody."
From the cottage the boys walked to the barn. As they entered this building they heard earnest talking in the rear.
"You are a mean lad, to tease an old man like me!" they heard, in Caspar Potts's quavering tones. "Why cannot you go away and leave me alone?"
"Don't you call me mean!" came in Nat Poole's voice. "I'll do what I please, and you can't stop me!"
"I want you to leave me alone," reiterated the old professor.
"I will—when I am done with you. How do you like that, old man?" And then Nat Poole gave a brutal laugh.
"Oh! oh! Don't smother me!" spluttered Caspar Potts. "Please leave me alone! You have ruined my clothes!"
"I wonder what's up?" said Dave to his chums, and ran through the barn to the rear. There he beheld Caspar Potts in a corner. In front of him stood Nat Poole, holding a big garden syringe in his hands. The syringe had been filled with a preparation for spraying peach trees, and the son of the money-lender had discharged the chalk-like fluid all over the aged professor.