"I expect you to give me enough money to carry me to Oklahoma City from what my father left me. When I get settled out there, I will let you know, and you can send me the rest of the money which was entrusted to you for me. If I took it with me, I might get robbed."
When the merciless old man recovered his breath, he exclaimed:
"What do you mean about the money your father left for you? Don't you know he didn't have a cent? Don't you know that if I hadn't taken pity on you, fool that I was—but your father did me a favor once, and so I thought I could repay it by taking you—that you would have been sent to an orphan asylum? And this is the return I get. Here I've spent my hard-earned money for twelve years to buy you food and clothing, and yet you dare to say that I have money for you which your father left. I never heard of such ingratitude."
"I know that you are not telling the truth," retorted Bob. "I have a letter my father wrote, saying that I was to open it when I was ten years old, in which he said that he had given you five thousand dollars to have me educated."
"What nonsense! What an outrage!" exclaimed the grocer, though Bob's statement had caused his face to become more than usually ashen-hued. "I've a mind to thrash you for saying such a thing. Me have five thousand dollars of yours! I never heard anything so preposterous!"
"I tell you, you have the money. Here's the letter that says so," retorted Bob. And, as he spoke, he drew his hand from his pocket, disclosing to the uneasy gaze of his guardian an envelope yellow with age, worn and soiled from much handling, but upon which was the writing which he recognized, all too well, as that of Horace Chester, Bob's father.
For an instant the grocer glowered at the boy and the letter, and then his shrewd mind, suggesting a way out of the embarrassing predicament in which the boy had placed him, he exclaimed:
"Poor Horace! I had always hoped to keep from you the fact that he was insane at the time of his death, but this letter makes it impossible. It was while laboring under the delusion that he had money, that he wrote you of this phantom bequest. Poor Horace! The sight of his writing moves me deeply, especially as I have to disabuse you of the delusion that I am holding five thousand dollars in trust for you," and he held out his hand.
Had it not been for the look of cunning that appeared in his guardian's eyes as he uttered these words, which cast such a stigma upon the name of the boy's dead father, Bob might have believed him, but he had been watching his guardian intently. He saw the look of cunning, and instead of surrendering the letter, he hastily thrust it back into his pocket.
Forgetting all discretion, as he saw that his plot for obtaining possession of the letter had failed, Len Dardus rushed upon the boy, with the evident purpose of obtaining it by force, exclaiming: