"Then you'll let me have the money to-morrow?"
"I'll try."
The two parted, and Ben, thoroughly miserable, went home, trying to devise some means to appease his inexorable creditor, whom he began to wish he had never met.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BEN MAKES A DISCOVERY.
Ben went home slowly, in a state of great perplexity. He knew his mother too well to think she would pay him three hundred dollars without weighty cause. Should he tell her the scrape he had got into? He felt a natural reluctance to do that, nor was he by any means satisfied that she would pay the money if he did. Then again he was ashamed to admit that he was afraid to fight. He felt convinced that, should he reveal the matter, his mother would bid him take advantage of the legal worthlessness of his notes to Winchester. He would gladly do it, but was afraid, and did not dare to admit it. On the whole, Ben felt decidedly uncomfortable.
"Is mother at home?" he inquired, when he reached home.
"No; she's gone over to Mrs. Talbot's to spend the afternoon," was the reply.