The boy made another feeble effort to say he was all right. Then, his voice trembling a little, he said hastily:
“I’m kind o’ lonesome, Mr. Camp. An’ you folks have been so good to me that it makes me all the lonesomer.”
The grizzled mill owner laughed.
“I don’t see why yer botherin’ ’bout that. We ain’t seen nur heerd much o’ ye fur a good many years. But your folks was purty good friends o’ mother an’ me. An’ ye knowed Josh. Why, Bud, it seems almost like as ye was related to us. We’ll be glad to hev ye come out here whenever ye like.”
“I thank you, Mr. Camp. But I didn’t mean that exactly. I ain’t got no home now. An’ I ain’t got no education. An’ I’m purt near too old to go to school ef I could.”
“Ain’t got no home?”
Bud related how he had been cast out by Attorney Stockwell; how all his worldly possessions were in the little bundle he had brought with him the night before; and how he had now in his pocket just five dollars.
Mr. Camp’s whiskers worked violently. He tried to ask two or three questions at once. Mainly, why Bud hadn’t told him this, and how it happened that he was working for nothing in such a dangerous enterprise. The boy satisfied him as well as he could.
“Now,” interrupted the old man, at last, “I ain’t got but one thing to say. Yer a goin’ to turn over this craft this evenin’ to the fair folks, air ye?”
Bud nodded his head.