"Very well, Fred."
Mrs. Fenton was so much in the habit of trusting to her son that she dismissed the matter with less anxiety than Fred felt. He knew very well that trusting for something to turn up is a precarious dependence, but there seemed nothing better to do.
CHAPTER IV. — ZEBULON MACK.
At twelve that day the landlord, Zebulon Mack, presented himself promptly at the door of Mrs. Fenton's room.
He was a small, thin, wrinkled man, whose suit would have been refused as a gift by the average tramp, yet he had an income of four thousand dollars a year from rents. He was now sixty years of age. At twenty-one he was working for eight dollars a week, and saving three-fifths of that. By slow degrees he had made himself rich, but in so doing he had denied himself all but the barest necessaries. What he expected to do with his money, as he was a bachelor with no near relatives, was a mystery, and he had probably formed no definite ideas himself. But it was his great enjoyment to see his hoards annually increasing, and he had no mercy for needy or unfortunate tenants who found themselves unable to pay their rent promptly.
Mrs. Fenton opened the door with a troubled look.
"I've come for that other three dollars, ma'am," said Zebulon Mack, standing on the threshold.
"I'm very sorry, sir——" began the widow.