“You say you remember something about the twentieth of last August?”
“Why, I ought to, father, because it was something that happened unexpectedly that day that caused me to be promoted from being a mere ’prentice in the printing room to being your helper here.”
“Oh! Ah! Let me see! That was—yes—the day I took you into the office was the day Norton absconded, for his sudden desertion left me in the lurch. And so, Mr. Force,” said the editor, turning to his visitor, “I took my lad here, who had been learning to be a printer, on to help me. It was only as a temporary accommodation of myself to circumstances that I took him, for I intended to look up another assistant, but he proved himself so capable that I have kept him on ever since, and saved the expense of a journeyman.”
“Ah!” breathed Mr. Force, while Wynnette and Leonidas bent eagerly forward to listen for further developments of the mystery.
“Won’t the young lady take a chair?” said Mr. Purdy; for the party had been standing the whole time.
Leonidas drew the only chair in sight from the back of the passage between the counter and the wall, and Wynnette bowed, and seated herself.
“Could there have been any connection between the insertion of that fraudulent notice and the sudden flight of your foreman?” inquired Mr. Force.
“Looks like it,” said the editor, still being much puzzled. Then, turning to his son, he inquired:
“Obed, do you think you can throw any light on this mystery? You know what we are talking about, of course. You heard what this gentleman has been telling me.”
“Yes, father.”