“But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!”
“I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist that you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the receipt.”
“Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” I pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call on you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of the profits—but I won’t bother you any more to-night.”
“That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.”
I waited for him to come along with me.
“Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I prefer to walk home alone—I have some business matters to run over in my head.”
I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a Sidney chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take this dismissal in bad part. I marched off.
But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the road I stood stock-still. What did it mean—his command to hand over the money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for his footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound.
It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I left her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness.
I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked.