“If I can get my five thousand dollars, no. If I can’t, yes. I suppose I shall have to talk to the old man now.”
“I don’t see what else you can do,” assented Arthur. “But I say, Sam, don’t mention my name to him, will you? Just tell him that the boys suspect that he knows how Bob’s oar was broken, and that will frighten him so that he will hand the money over to you without saying a word.”
“That’s worth thinking of,” admitted Sam.
“If you want money to keep still about this thing, that is the only way to get it,” declared Arthur. “I can’t raise it for you, and that’s all there is about it. I have tried and failed.”
“Well, I shan’t fail,” said Sam, emphatically. “If I do, the old man may make up his mind that something disagreeable is going to happen. I’ll sleep on what you have told me, and perhaps I shall be down again to-morrow morning. Good-by!”
“But, Sam, promise that you will not even hint that I know how Bob’s oar was broken,” begged Arthur.
“All right!” answered the herdsman.
But he did not give the promise. The time might come, he told himself, when the youth would be of use to him, and he thought it best to retain a hold upon him.
“I’ve done it,” soliloquized Arthur, as he once more began his aimless wanderings about the grove, “and now we shall see what will come of it. It was the only course that was left open to me, for I could see very plainly that Sam is fully determined to make trouble, unless his demands are complied with. I hope he will frighten father so badly that he will pack up and leave for Bolton at once.”
Arthur was so deeply engrossed with his meditations that he did not hear the slight rustling in the thicket behind him, which was made by a man—an unintentional listener to the conversation that had taken place between himself and Sam—as he arose from a log on which he had been sitting, and shook both his fists in the air. It was old Ike, the cook.