“There is only one thing you can do,” continued Mr. Culpepper, eagerly, “that will cause me to waive my rights, and you know what that is. Those are my only terms of surrender.”
“That’s just where you’re a whole lot mistaken Mr. Culpepper!” cried Carl, unable to hold in any longer, and thrusting his head and shoulders through the open window as he spoke.
The widow gave a slight shriek, while Mr. Culpepper said something half under his breath that no doubt expressed his feelings.
“What do you mean by saying that?” he asked, in a voice that was unsteady.
“You made a statement that you’ll have to take water on,” Carl told him with a broad smile on his face. “Listen! My mother will be down at your office to-morrow morning with Judge Beatty and myself, and she’ll demand that you deliver the paper that this receipt calls for!”
With that he held up the precious little paper so that those in the sitting room could see it. Mrs. Oskamp gave a bubbling cry of joy, while Amasa Culpepper, seizing his hat and stick, hurried out of the door, entered his buggy and whipped his horse savagely, as though glad to vent his ill humor on some animate object.
Carl was not another moment in climbing through the open window and gathering his mother in his strong arms. The whole story was told that evening with the younger children gathered around. Mrs. Oskamp sat there and felt her mother heart glow with pride as she heard how Carl had played his part in the exciting drama connected with the hike of the Boy Scouts.
“It seems as though some power over which you had no control must have led you on to the glorious success that came in the end,” she told the happy Carl, after everything had been narrated. “With that paper in our hands we can have no further trouble in securing our property. But I shall feel that we owe something to Dock Phillips, and that it can only be repaid through kindness to his mother.”
On the following day they took Judge Beatty, who was an old friend of Carl’s father, into their confidence, and the certificate of stock was promptly though grudgingly delivered to them on demand.
Amasa Culpepper knew that he had been fairly beaten in the game, and he annoyed Mrs. Oskamp no longer.