“One reason,” said Paul, hesitating a little, “is because I have no money to pay for riding.”
“Then how do you expect to live? Have you had any breakfast, this morning?”
“I brought some with me, and just got through eating it when you came along.”
“And where do you expect to get any dinner?” pursued his questioner, who was evidently not a little puzzled by the answers he received.
“I don't know,” returned Paul.
His companion looked not a little confounded at this view of the matter, but presently a bright thought struck him.
“I shouldn't wonder,” he said, shrewdly, “if you were running away.”
Paul hesitated a moment. He knew that his case must look a little suspicious, thus unexplained, and after a brief pause for reflection determined to take the questioner into his confidence. He did this the more readily because his new acquaintance looked very pleasant.
“You've guessed right,” he said; “if you'll promise not to tell anybody, I'll tell you all about it.”
This was readily promised, and the boy who gave his name as John Burgess, sat down beside Paul, while he, with the frankness of boyhood, gave a circumstantial account of his father's death, and the ill-treatment he had met with subsequently.