"None of your business," was the characteristic answer; "is Fred Sheldon there?"
"I'm here," said Fred, rising to the sitting position. "What do you want of me?"
Bud Heyland acted curiously. He looked sharply at the boy, and then said:
"I don't want anything of you just now, but I'll see you later," and without anything further he moved on, leaving our hero wondering why he had not asked for the ten dollars due him.
Fred expected he would return, and was greatly relieved when the teacher appeared and school was called. Fearful that the bully would wait for him on the road, Fred went to the old brick mansion first, where he stayed till dark, when he decided to run over to his own home, look after matters there, and then return by a new route to the old ladies who were so kind to him.
He kept a sharp lookout on the road, but saw nothing of either Bud or Cyrus Sutton.
"It seems to me," said Fred to himself, as he approached the old familiar spot, "that I ought to hear something from mother by this time. There isn't any school to-morrow, and I'll walk over to Uncle Will's and find out when she's coming home, and then I'll tell her all I've got to tell, which is so much, with what I want to ask, that it'll take me a week to get through—halloo! What does that mean?"
He stopped short in the road, for through the closed blinds of the lower story he caught the twinkling rays of a light that some one had started within.
"I wonder whether it is our house they're going to rob to-night," exclaimed Fred, adding the next moment, with a grim humor: "If it is, they will be more disappointed than they ever were in their lives."
A minute's thought satisfied him that no one with a view to robbery was there, for the good reason that there was nothing to steal, as anyone would be quick to learn.