How to foil Ezra Winter in his fraudulent schemes Ben could not tell. Though he had more experience than most boys of his age he was not so familiar with villainy as some boys who have been brought up amid different surroundings.
“I must consult some one older and wiser than myself,” he reflected.
Arrived in Boston he grew impatient to start for Wrayburn. It was more than a year—about fifteen months—since he had left the quiet town, and he felt a strong desire to see his mother. He could have gone a considerably longer time without seeing Mr. Winter—indeed he would not have mourned much if he knew he should never see him again.
But no boy who has a heart does not feel it throb quicker at the thought of his mother. Ben’s mother had always been kind, loving and indulgent, and his recent good fortune he valued the more because it would enable him to provide for her more liberally than ever before, and save her from all future anxiety and hard work.
It was not over seventy miles from Boston to Wrayburn. It had seemed to him when he first made the journey a long one, but he had been such a traveler in the fifteen months that had elapsed since that it seemed to him a very short one.
He looked about him eagerly to see if he could see any familiar form. But no Wrayburn man seemed to be returning from Boston. When he was fifteen miles from Wrayburn, his heart leaped with pleasure as a passenger with a familiar face entered the car.
It was Mr. John Bentham, an elderly lawyer who lived only about half a mile from Jacob Winter’s farmhouse, and did what law business was required by the people in Wrayburn and the adjoining towns.
Ben rose and went over to the lawyer’s seat.
“How do you do, Mr. Bentham?” he said.
The lawyer lifted his glasses and surveyed Ben at first with a puzzled expression.