CHAPTER V.
A SAIL ON THE LAKE.
IT IS beyond my power to describe Guy’s feelings at that moment. He had never in his life been more grievously disappointed. It had never occurred to him that anybody who knew anything would discourage his project, much less the editors of his favorite journal, to whom he had made a full revelation of his circumstances and troubles. And then there was the expense, which greatly exceeded his calculations. That was the great drawback.
“Humph!” soliloquized Guy, after he had thought the matter over, “the man who wrote that article didn’t know my father and mother. If he did, he wouldn’t be so positive that everything they do is for the best. I know better, and won’t give up my idea. I am determined to succeed. There are plenty of men who make a living and see any amount of sport by hunting and trapping, and why shouldn’t I? Kit Carson is a real man and so is Captain Bridges. So is Adams, the great grizzly bear tamer. One of these days, when I am as famous as they are, I shall laugh to think I did become a professional hunter. But the money is what bothers me now. I shall need at least three hundred dollars. Great Cæsar! Where am I to get it? I’ve worked and scraped and saved for the last six months, and I’ve got just fifteen dollars. That isn’t enough to buy a rifle. Where is the rest to come from? That’s the question.”
Guy walked along with his hands behind his back and his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground, revolving this problem in his mind. His prospects did not look nearly so bright now as they did an hour ago. He was learning a lesson we all have to learn sooner or later, and that is that we cannot always have things as we want them in this world, and that the best laid schemes are often defeated by some unlooked-for event. Three hundred dollars! He never could earn that amount. His rags brought him but two cents a pound, and although he kept a sharp lookout and pounced upon every piece of cloth he found lying about the house, it sometimes took him a whole month to fill his bag, which held just five pounds. Old iron was worth only a cent a pound, and business in this line was beginning to get very dull, for he had not found a single horseshoe during the last two weeks, and he had purchased the last thing in the shape of broken frying-pans and battered kettles that any of his companions had to dispose of. He must find some other way to earn money. He had thought of carrying papers, which would add a dollar and a quarter a week to his income, besides what he would make out of his Carriers’ Addresses on New Years. But Mr. Harris had vetoed that plan the moment it was proposed.
Guy did not know what to do next.
“Dear me, am I not in a fix?” he asked himself. “I read in the paper the other day of a boy picking up five thousand dollars that some banker dropped in the street. Why wasn’t I lucky enough to find it? That banker might have whistled for his money when once I got my hands upon it. I must have three hundred dollars and I don’t care how I get it.”
Guy was gradually working himself into a very dangerous frame of mind. When one begins to talk to himself in this way it needs only the opportunity to make a thief of him. If Guy thought of this, he did not care, for he continued to reason thus, and was not at all alarmed when a daring project suddenly suggested itself to him. Twenty-four hours ago he would not have dared to ponder upon it; but now he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon it, and the longer he turned it over in his mind the more firmly he became convinced that it was a splendid idea and that it could be successfully carried out. He wanted to get away by himself and look at the matter in all its bearings. With this object in view he turned down Erie Street and bent his steps toward Buck’s boat-house, intending to spend an hour or two on the lake. In that time he believed he could make up his mind what was best to be done.
Arriving at the boat-house, Guy entered and accosted the proprietor, who stood behind his bar dispensing liquor and cigars to a party of excursionists who had just returned from a sail on the lake.