“Well, if you are going down to Manchester to look for that money, which I don’t believe is there, you can go,” said Nat. “But I will stay here. I am not going to dig around unless I can make something by it.”
“Oh, come on now, Nat,” said Caleb, coaxingly. “You know where it is and I will bet on it.”
“If you do bet on it you will lose whatever you bet. But I have already had my say. I won’t go down to Manchester with you.”
“If you don’t go I will tell pap,” said Caleb, growing angry again.
“You can run and tell him as soon as you please. If I could see the money sticking up before me this minute I would not give you a cent of it. It does not belong to you.”
“Then I bet you I am going to tell pap,” said Caleb, who was so nearly beside himself that he walked up and down the barn swinging his hands about his head. “You will get that switch over your shoulders before you go to bed tonight. Whoop-pe! I would not have the licking you will get for anything.”
Caleb marched away as if he were afraid he would forget his errand before he got to the house, and Nat leaned against the door-post and watched him. There was one good reason why Caleb would not tell his father of the tobacco hidden in the fence corner, and that was the fear that the switch would be used upon himself. Why had he not told his father of it when he came from town? Jonas was in just the right mood to use that switch then, and he would have beaten Nat most unmercifully until he got at the full history of the tobacco money. But Caleb had let it go for three days now, and perhaps Jonas felt differently about it. Nat did not know this. He stood there in the door of the barn waiting for Jonas to come, but he waited in vain. Nat was doing some heavy thinking in the meantime, and he finally concluded that he would go and see Peleg and have the matter settled before he went any further. With a parting glance at the house he put the bushes that lined the potato patch between them, broke into a run and in a quarter of an hour he was at Peleg’s barn. Peleg was there. He was engaged in getting some corn ready to go to the mill and he was husking it.
“Well, Nat, where are you going to find another friend like Mr. Nickerson was to you?” was the way he greeted Nat when he came into the barn.
“I don’t know,” was Nat’s reply. “I am left alone in the world. There is nobody who cares a cent whether I live or die.”
When Peleg saw what humor Nat was in, how solemn he talked about the loss of his friend, he faced about on his seat and looked at him. Any boy who had been in Nat’s place would have been satisfied that Peleg could not be trusted, and would have turned away from him to look elsewhere for a friend. He was not a bad looking boy, but he had a kind of sneaking, hang-dog way with him that did not go far toward making his friends. But he had friends and that was the worst of it. It was a sort of policy with Peleg to agree to every thing that any body said to him. He did that with an object, and Nat always thought that he listened with the intention of learning something. Perhaps if we follow him closely we shall see how nearly he drew Nat on to tell him all about the money and the plans he had laid for obtaining possession of it.