“What would have become of me if you hadn’t been on the boat? This is the second time you have saved my life,” said George, gratefully.
“Shall I tell him who and what I am?” thought Bob, as he seated himself on the ground, panting loudly. “If he knew that I am a runaway and a thief—for I am a thief,” added Bob, whose recent experience seemed to have opened his eyes to some things to which he had been blind before—“if he knew that, would he ever speak to me again? Would he be so anxious to have me go home with him?”
Bob was in a very sober frame of mind just now. He had been near to death twice since he left home—how near no one knew except himself. On both occasions while he was towing George toward the shore, he had overtaxed his strength, and it was all he could do to save himself and his new friend. During those moments of suspense it seemed to him that he lived over every hour of his life. He thought of his home and those he had left there as he had never thought of them before. It was right on the end of his tongue to say to the young pilot—
“George, I have told you a pack of falsehoods. I have a home, three sisters, and as kind a father and mother as ever lived. I stole a hundred and sixty dollars and ran away so that I might spend the money for a breech-loading gun and a jointed fish-pole.”
How worthless these things seemed to Bob now! He would willingly have given up all hopes of ever owning them for just one look at his mother’s face. He did not speak the words that arose to his lips, for he knew that in order to be consistent he must follow them up by going home and facing the consequences of his folly. He wasn’t brave enough to do that then, but he did it afterward, and, besides, he made all the reparation in his power. He did it, too, at such cost to himself that every one who knew the circumstances was willing to forgive him.
CHAPTER XIV
A SPECIMEN TRAPPER.
THE boys, warned by their recent narrow escape, sat on the bank in gloomy silence and watched the Sam Kendall as she was slowly consumed before their eyes. They noticed that her forecastle was deserted now, and Bob shuddered when he asked himself how many of those he had seen there a short half hour before had found a watery grave. Presently the hog-chain braces parted with a loud crash, and the flames blazed up brightly for a moment as the stern of the vessel floated off with the current. In a few minutes it disappeared around the bend.
“That’s the last of the Sam Kendall,” said George, sadly, “and, although I know that she was an unseaworthy old tub, I couldn’t feel worse if I were compelled to stand by and see my own home burned up. Indeed she was my home—the only one I had.”
“Why, I thought you had a home in Texas, and that you are going back there,” said Bob.