“I shall not follow him, Mother,” he said. “He may have the horse, but he must not come back here until he comes in sackcloth and ashes. I am sorry that I have lived to see the day when a son of mine has come to be little better than a common thief.”
The father had passed down the stairs and out at the door, while mother and daughter sat long together, mingling their tears over the unhappy fate of the boy whom both had idolized, and whose strange folly had made him, to all intents and purposes, an exile from his home.
[CHAPTER III.]
ON THE CANAL.
It is at Rondout that the Delaware and Hudson Canal, reaching across from the anthracite-coal regions of Pennsylvania, touches tide-water on the Hudson. It is here that the bulky canal-boats, having discharged their cargoes of coal, turn their bows again to the westward. From the low-lying lands at the river’s edge the mouth of Rondout Creek curves back into the hills, forming for miles a safe, broad harbor.
On the northerly shore of the creek is the wharf. On the left side of this wharf long lines of canal-boats are tied to the wharf posts, and fastened one to another. On the right, canal stores, blacksmith’s shops, and stables extend as far as the eye can reach.
In the early morning, before the activities of the day have begun, this wharf is a deserted and forbidding place, and on one such early morning in September, with chill air and cloudy skies, and not even a rose tint in the dull east, there was no one to be seen throughout the whole length of the wharf save one slowly moving boy.
This boy was so dull and miserable in appearance as to be hardly noticeable against the general dulness around him. His clothing was ragged and dusty, his shoes were out at both heel and toe. The battered hat, pulled well down over his eyes, shaded a haggard and a hungry face. His mother herself would scarcely have recognized this scarecrow as Joe Gaston.