"I will advance you enough to pay your board and furnish you with new clothes, and you can go right along here as though you had been on a vacation. But mind you, Sam, no dipping into my business."
And so it was settled that Sam got a new outfit, and when he went home to breakfast that morning he was dressed in a new suit of clothes and paid his landlady the two weeks' board that was due her. She never knew that anything was wrong, for Mr. Vollar had solemnly kept his promise.
"I am all right," said Sam, as he hung his hat up on its old nail and gazed after his employer, who had just gone out to his meal. "I don't care if some one finds a gold-mine up there, Sam Houston will have no hand in looking for it. I'll stay right here and take my six dollars a week. I hope that everybody will come out as slick as I did—all except Joe Lufkin. I shall always think hard of him."
Those two weeks that Sam Houston had devoted to finding the pearls were enough to bring everybody back to their old, legitimate way of living; and so it run along for the nine months that Bob was absent from Clifton. No one heard a word from him, and almost everybody thought he was dead—all except Mr. Gibbons and Hank. They believed that he would come back. The lawyer kept close watch of Joe to see how much money he spent, but Joe was very sly about it. If Joe wanted a shirt or some tobacco, he took from his buried bundle just the sum he wanted, and no more, and Mr. Gibbons supposed he was drawing on his wife. Leon Sprague went to school and completed his course there, and went to college; but it was a very different school from what it was when Bob was there. All the boys had heard what had become of Bob, and wondered if they were ever going to see him again. Gus Layton did not go back to the academy, for the "benefit" the boys had given him the last afternoon he passed there still rung in his ears. He stayed at home with his father, and as he had no one to associate with, the life he led there was monotonous in the extreme. He kept away from Sam Houston, for he didn't want to hear anything more about that codicil. His father had told him that he had not touched the will, and that was all Gus cared to know about it. Mr. Layton bought him a pair of high-stepping horses, which were far ahead of the ponies he had lost, but no one seemed to care a cent for him when he went out riding. Mr. Jones had kindly offered to keep the ponies for a year, Mr. Gibbons paying their board in the meantime, and if, at the end of that time, Bob did not make his appearance, then something else was to be done with them. Hank Lufkin was in a hard row of stumps, indeed; but then it was no worse than he had been in before. After a while he renewed his efforts to find more pearls, but at last he was impelled to give it up. Not a single pearl did he find. Mr. Vollar called him into the store and divided fifty dollars with him, and Hank put that where he knew it would be safe.
Things went on in this way until one bright spring morning there came a telegram to Mr. Curtis, the president of the bank. It was from San Francisco, and read as follows:
"I will be with you next week. That codicil is a fraud. Don't let Luther Layton have any more money on my account. Let him and Joseph Lufkin know about it, but don't attempt to arrest them if they try to leave the village."
Mr. Curtis was wild with excitement. He sent at once for his cashier, and showed him the telegram.
"I really wish they had been more explicit," said he. "It is signed by Robert Nellis, but it doesn't say whether he's the old man or the boy. At any rate, you will let Luther Layton have no more funds. He will be down here some time to-day, for he wants money to pay his hands with, and you tell him that I want to see him."
Gus Layton came just before the hour of closing up, and presented a check for one hundred dollars. The cashier looked at it a moment, and then remarked that Mr. Curtis wanted to see his father.
"He is sick," answered Gus. "He has not been out of the house for several weeks."