“He’s too modest to say so, but that’s jest it,” Sellick answered for him. “I took him yisterday, and he took me this morning—by surprise. I’ve hardly got my breath yit. Bright boy, Jack! honest boy! Says he has done nothing he ought to go to jail for, but if we want to put him in jail, we can; and I vow I don’t know but what that’s the right view to take on ’t!”
“O Jack! is this so?” said Mrs. Chatford, hurrying to the side of the buggy, and seizing both the boy’s hands, while she looked up earnestly in his face.
“Yes,” replied Jack, smiling frankly, yet with quivering lips and misty eyes. “After talking with Annie last night,”—casting a glance of affectionate gratitude at the schoolmistress,—“I concluded I had been foolish. I didn’t know what I wanted to run away for. If I have done wrong, why, I’m willing to suffer for it. I know I’ve been wrong in some things. The idea of finding so much money, and then of having it taken from me, made me wild; I wasn’t myself; but I guess I’m all right now, and I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, winking away a tear or two.
“Bless you, dear boy! what have I to forgive?” said Mrs. Chatford, while tears ran down her own upturned face.
“After all you had done for me, to think that I could be so cross and sullen to you and to everybody, because Squire Peternot had wronged me; and then to have such thoughts,—I can’t tell you what bad thoughts I have had!” Jack exclaimed, beginning to choke a little. “But they are gone now, I hope. I’m just going to take what comes, and make the best of it.”
“That is right! O Jack, I am so glad to hear you talk so! If you can go to jail in this spirit, it will do you no harm. I shall think more of you and hope more for you than ever! So will all your friends.—Phineas, come here, and tell your father to come!”
“Well, Jack! caught, after all, are you?” said Mr. Chatford, walking slowly towards the gate.
“No, sir, not caught; Mr. Sellick won’t say I’ve been caught,” replied Jack.
“No, I don’t take no credit to myself,” said Sellick; “Jack’s here of his own free will, or he wouldn’t be here.” And he told the story of Jack’s stay in the barn the night before, and his sudden appearance in the cow-yard that morning.
“I think you’ll be satisfied with him now,” added Mrs. Chatford; “for he has come of his own accord to make acknowledgments, and to ask our forgiveness.”