After thinking over the question for a day or two, Dick decided to tell his parents everything. They had learned of what had occurred, and he believed it would be a pleasure to them to be told that one result of the blow was the reformation of McGovern.
Such was the fact, but the greatest happiness that could come to the father and mother was that of learning the nobility of their boy, who had conducted himself so admirably through more than one crisis, more trying than most youths older than he are ever called upon to face.
Matters stood thus at the end of a week after the flood, when Dick Halliard was surprised by the reception of a letter from New York. He did not recognize the handwriting, and broke the seal with no little curiosity. A glance at the bottom of the page showed the name of Jim McGovern as the writer.
“My dear Dick,” he said, after giving the particulars of the funeral over the remains of Wagstaff, “I can never tell you how deeply grateful I am to you; I am not one of those who gush, and will not say more except to repeat a remark which my father made when I had told him all. ‘There is no earthly honor,’ said he, ‘which could be given me, that I would not surrender for the sake of having a son like Richard Halliard.’ Considered strictly as a compliment, I think you will admit, Dick, that that has some weight. I know your modesty, but I must beg you as a favor to me to read all my letter up to this point, when you must stop, for here comes something which is a secret for the present between you and me. You will not give a hint of it to any one.
“Come to think, however, there is no secret that I’m going to reveal in the letter, but I will tell you the next time we meet that will make your hair lift your hat. I want you to get permission right away from Mr. Hunter to come to New York for a couple of days. Telegraph me what time you will reach here, and I will meet you at the station and take you home. If anything should happen to prevent my being there on time come to No. — Madison Avenue, give your name, and wait for me. My folks will be delighted to receive you, and you will not be kept long waiting.
“I have arranged to enter Yale at the next term. I shall need to brush up in my studies, but I’m confident I’ll get there all the same, if you’ll excuse a little slang which still clings to me. But above all things, come to New York as soon as you can. I promise you will not regret it.”
As may be supposed, Dick Halliard found more than one cause for surprise in this letter. The first was the fact that the writer possessed a much better education than he suspected. The composition was not only correct as regards grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but the statement of his decision to enter Yale College showed the advantages the youth had received, and which were far superior to what would be supposed by one who heard McGovern discourse when a member of the Piketon Rangers.
But Dick was shrewd, and, although he respected the request of the writer that nothing should be revealed about the letter, he suspected the nature of the “secret” to which he referred in such strong language.
“Jim is in the flush of a mistaken sense of gratitude to me,” he said to himself, “and he has persuaded his father to feel very much the same way. They want to get me down there to their home, that they may all see and tell me how thankful they are, and perhaps they mean to make me a present of some kind. I don’t think I’ll go.”
Nothing could be more distasteful to young Halliard than a proceeding of the kind he had in mind. It is no misstatement to say that he would have preferred to receive personal chastisement to that of being made a lion of by any one.