“I can see through some of it now jest as easy as fallin’ off a log,” moaned Godfrey, rocking himself back and forth as he sat on the ground, “an’ I blame myself fur not seein’ through it sooner. That thar Don is a great feller fur tricks, an’ here he’s gone an’ dressed hisself up like ole Jordan so’s to fool me an’ the rest.”
“If that is the case,” said Clarence, who at last succeeded in finding his tongue, “he must have known about the barrel; and how did he find that out?”
“I didn’t say I could see through it all, did I?” demanded Godfrey. “That’s the part I can’t understand, no more’n I can understand how you fust come to know about the bar’l.”
“How do you know it was Don?” asked Clarence, who could not realize the situation in which he was placed. “You haven’t been near the cellar this morning, have you?”
“No, I hain’t; but I know it’s Mr. Don all the same,” replied Godfrey. “Did ye never hear him whistle? Wal, I have. He can whistle so’t ye can hear him a mile; an’ the fust thing I heerd this mornin’, when I opened my eyes, was him a whistlin’ like he was a callin’ his dogs. I went to the door an’ listened, kase somethin’ kinder told me that mebbe things wasn’t jest right like they’d oughter be, an’ if them whistles didn’t come from that tater-hole, I ain’t a settin’ here.”
“Couldn’t old Jordan whistle?” asked Clarence, who still clung to the hope that Godfrey was mistaken.
“Not like that, an’ nuther could anybody else. I tell you he’s thar, Mr. Clarence, an’ now what’s goin’ to become of me an’ you?”
“De pony ready, sar,” said the hostler, showing himself at the end of the crib at this moment.
“Whar ye goin’?” asked Godfrey, as Clarence moved away. “Don’t leave me now. I’m in a power of trouble an’ trib’lation!”
“Am I any better off, I’d like to know?” demanded the boy angrily. “You think of no one but yourself. Here am I, fifteen hundred miles from home, and with scarcely twenty dollars that I can call my own.”