“Oh, it’s an unfortunate mistake I made,” was the answer. “If you’ll wait a while, to make sure the police and sheriffs officers are not after me, I’ll come out and explain.”
“I wish you would, Tithy, for Bill and I are much in the dark.”
After a wait of several minutes, during which Bill wondered what in the world could have caused the rain-maker to flee in such terror, the individual in question came out of the compartment devoted to the sleeping bunks.
“Well?” asked the professor.
“Not well—bad,” was the despondent reply. “You see I found the star-gazing trade poor lately, on account of so many cloudy nights, so, in order to make a living I ventured to proclaim that I would read the stars and reveal the future—for a consideration. It was risky, I know, but I did it, and did it well—for a time.
“All was prosperous and happy, until to-night, just before supper I was visited by a man who wanted to know whether he would be successful in a certain undertaking. I consulted my charts and said that he would.”
“What was the undertaking?” asked Bill.
“He was going to collect a long overdue bill from a man who owed him some money,” went on the astronomer. “I told him to be firm, and he would succeed.
“A little later he came back, all tattered and torn, with one eye blackened, his collar a rag, and his clothes covered with dirt. He entered my wagon without knocking, and presented himself before me.
“‘I was firm!’ he shouted at me, ‘but I did not succeed. This is what the other man did to me!’ Oh, it was terrible. He accused me of deceiving him, and he sprang at me, and would doubtless have made me suffer, but I escaped through the front door, leaving my beloved cat, Scratch, behind, and I fled here.