"None of your impertinent insinuations, you young rascal," said Mr. Davis, hotly. "The best advice I can give you is, to say nothing to any one about this extraordinary claim. It will only injure you, and I shall be compelled to resort to legal measures to punish you for circulating stories calculated to injure my reputation."
If the superintendent expected to intimidate Robert by this menace he was entirely mistaken in the character of our young hero. He bore the angry words and threatening glances of his enemy without quailing, as resolute and determined as ever.
"Mr. Davis," he said, "if there is no truth in this story, do you think my father, with death before his eyes, would have written it to my mother?"
"I have no evidence, except your word, that any such letter has been received."
"I can show it to you, if you desire it, in my father's handwriting."
"We will suppose, then, for a moment, that such a letter has been received, and was written by your father. I can understand how, being about to die, and feeling that his family were without provision, he should have written such a letter with the intention of giving you a claim upon me, whom he no doubt selected supposing me to be a rich man. It was not justifiable, but something can be excused to a man finding himself in such a position."
Robert was filled with indignation as he listened to this aspersion upon his father's memory. He would not have cared half so much for any insult to himself.
"Mr. Davis," he said, boldly, "it is enough for you to cheat my mother out of the money which my father left her, but when you accuse my father of fraud you go too far. You know better than any one that everything which he wrote is true."
The superintendent flushed under the boy's honest scorn, and, unable to defend himself truthfully, he worked himself into a rage.
"What! do you dare insult me in my own office?" he exclaimed, half rising from his desk, and glaring at our hero. "Out of my sight at once, or I may be tempted to strike you!"