The farmer's patience was running emptings. “No!” he said, severely, “I forbid ye! Don't ye dare say a word to her about it. She don't want to listen to ye—an' I don't know what's possessed me to stand round an' gab about my private affairs with you like this, either. I don't bear ye no ill-will. If fathers can't help the kind o' sons they bring up, why, still less can ye blame sons on account o' their fathers. But it ain't a thing I want to talk about any more, either now or any other time. That's all.”
Abner put the fork over his shoulder, as a sign that he was going, and that the interview was at an end. But the persistent Ni had a last word to offer—and he left his barrel and walked over to the farmer.
“See here,” he said, in more urgent tones than he had used before, “I'm goin' South, an' I'm goin' to find Jeff if it takes a leg! I don't know how much it'll cost—I've got a little of my own saved up—an' I thought p'r'aps—p'r'aps you'd like to—”
After a moment's thought the farmer shook his head. “No,” he said, gravely, almost reluctantly. “It's agin my principles. You know me—Ni—you know I've never b'en a near man, let alone a mean man. An' ye know, too, that if Je—if that boy had behaved half-way decent, there ain't anything under the sun I wouldn't 'a' done for him. But this thing—I'm obleeged to ye for offrin—but—No! it's agin my principles. Still, I'm obleeged to ye. Fill your pockets with them spitzenbergs, if they taste good to ye.”
With this Abner Beech turned and walked resolutely off.
Left alone with me, Ni threw away the half-eaten apple he had held in his hand. “I don't want any of his dummed old spitzenbergs,” he said, pushing his foot into the heap of fruit on the ground, in a meditative way.
“Then you ain't agoin' South?” I queried.
“Yes I am!” he replied, with decision. “I can work my way somehow. Only don't you whisper a word about it to any livin' soul, d'ye mind!”
Two or three days after that we heard that Ni Hagadorn had left for unknown parts. Some said he had gone to enlist—it seems that, despite his youth and small stature in my eyes, he would have been acceptable to the enlistment standards of the day—but the major opinion was that much dime-novel reading had inspired him with the notion of becoming a trapper in the mystic Far West.
I alone possessed the secret of his disappearance—unless, indeed, his sister knew—and no one will ever know what struggles I had to keep from confiding it to Hurley.