“Sure!” assented their father. “This is that O’Neil man’s son,” he went on, speaking to his boys.
“What, O’Neil; the Klondiker?” asked Tom quickly.
“Yes,” assented Neale. “Can you tell me about him? Where is he? How did he make out in Alaska?”
“Well, he’s on an island about ten miles from here,” was the answer of Henry. “As for making out, I don’t believe he did very well in the gold business, to tell you the truth. He doesn’t say much about it, but I guess the other men got most of it.”
“What other men?” asked Neale, and again his heart sank and that terrible suspicion came back to him.
“Oh, a bunch he is in with,” answered Henry Martin. “They all live together in a shack on Cedar Island. Your father hired a boat of us. I trusted him for it, as he said he had no ready cash. But I reckon it’s all right.”
This only served to make Neale more uneasy. He had been hoping against hope that his father would have found at least a competence in the Klondike.
Now it seemed he had not, and, driven by poverty, he might have adopted desperate measures. Nor did Neale like the remarks about his father being in with a “bunch” of men. True, Mr. O’Neil had been in the circus at one time, and they, of necessity, are a class of rough and ready men. But they are honest, Neale reflected. These other men—if the two who had escaped in the motor boat were any samples—were not to be trusted.
So it was with falling spirits that the boy waited for what was to happen next.
Agnes’ quick mind and ready sympathy guessed Neale’s thoughts.