“So can I use it,” said Godfrey, “an’ I’m going to have it, too. Yer mighty good to yerself, ain’t ye? Yer going off to yer home, fifteen hundred miles away, an’ leave me to bear the brunt of this business as best I can. But I ain’t agoin’ to stay nuther. I’m goin’ away, too. Hand ’em out here!”
“And what shall I do?” asked Clarence, who began to grow alarmed when he saw how determined Godfrey was. “How shall I get home without any money to pay my way?”
“Hand ’em out here, I say, an’ be quick about it,” answered Godfrey, making an effort to put his hand into the boy’s pocket. “I don’t care how ye get hum. Ye got me into this scrape an’ ye must pay my way outen it; that’s how the thing stands.”
“I’ll not go home at all,” exclaimed Clarence, doubling himself up and resisting to the utmost all Godfrey’s efforts to force his hand into his pocket. “I’ll stay and see this thing out on purpose to have you arrested.”
“I shall be miles back in the swamp in less’n an hour,” replied Godfrey, becoming enraged at the boy’s opposition and throwing him flat on his back in the road. “I’ve got my rifle with me, an’ the fust man that follows me will come to his death!”
Clarence did not doubt this in the least, for the expression on Godfrey’s face told him that he was terribly in earnest. He was like a child in the angry man’s grasp, but knowing how much depended on the small stock of money he had in his pocket he fought desperately to retain possession of it, but all to no purpose. Godfrey rolled him over, face downward, and holding him fast with one hand, quickly found the pocket-book with the other and pulled it out. He was about to examine it to make sure that the money was in it, but just then his ear caught the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the hard road. He listened to it a moment, and then jumped up and ran into the thicket from which he had just emerged; while Clarence, being equally anxious to avoid observation, scrambled to his feet with all haste and plunged into an opposite thicket. Almost overcome with the violence of his exertions he lay flat upon the ground, behind a convenient log, until the horseman came in sight, and then quickly ducked his head and held his breath. It was his uncle. He passed swiftly along, looking neither to the right nor left, and disappeared around a bend in the road.
“Whew!” panted Clarence. “Wasn’t that a narrow escape? What if I had waited to tell him about the robbery, as I at first meant to do? This is a little ahead of any experience I have had yet.”
Clarence looked up and down the road to make sure that the coast was clear, and then came out and crossed over to the opposite side to look for Godfrey. He was not to be seen. Clarence listened intently, but could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind through the branches of the trees. He called Godfrey’s name as loudly as he dared, but no answer was returned.
“He’s gone,” thought the boy, “and so are my twenty dollars; and here I am, two miles from the landing, afoot and alone. I wish I dared stay and have that fellow hunted up and punished. But I’d much rather lose the money than face my uncle after he finds out what I have done. I declare, I’m a nice-looking fellow to go among folks,” he added, looking down at his coat, which was sadly soiled and torn. “And the worst of it is, I shall continue to look this way for some days to come.”
Clarence thumped his clothes energetically to knock the dust out of them, settled his hat firmly on his head and set out at his best pace in the direction of Rochdale. He ran almost all the way, and the last half mile he made in remarkably quick time considering the circumstances, for he heard the Emma Deane whistle as she approached the landing. When he turned into the street on which the post-office stood, he was almost ready to drop with fatigue, but he was obliged to run faster than ever, for he heard the bell ring, and he knew that that was a signal to the crew to stand by the lines. He hoped there would be no one at the landing to see him, but he did not know the habits of the planters living in the vicinity. They were out in full force, and Clarence, as he dashed through them with his hat in his hand and the perspiration streaming from his face, excited no little astonishment, as he knew by the remarks he heard on every side. He staggered up the staging, and unable to go a step farther, sat down on the stairs that led to the boiler-deck, and panted loudly. The mates of the boat and the shipping clerk thought they recognised him, but were not quite sure about it; and that was not to be wondered at, for he looked very unlike the dashing, fashionably-dressed young fellow who had spent his money so freely for ale and cigars on the down trip.