“Bring me out his fiddle,” he said to Frank. “I’m his guardian, and I will take care of it for him.”
“He carried it away with him,” said Frank. The squire’s lower jaw fell. He was defeated at all points. “I guess we can’t do nothing, under the circumstances, squire,” said Joe Tucker, scratching his head.
“I shall have to reflect upon it,” said Squire Pope, in a crestfallen tone.
“That’s as good as a circus,” thought Frank, as his roguish glance followed the two baffled conspirators as they rode out of the yard. “It’s a pity Phil was not here to enjoy it.”
At the end of the second day, Philip was some forty miles distant from Norton. He had not walked all the way, but had got a lift for a few miles from a tin-peddler, with whom he had a social chat.
It cannot be said that he was depressed, or that he regretted having left Norton, but he certainly did feel uncomfortable, and his discomfort sprang from a very homely cause.
To tell the plain truth, he was hungry. He had not had anything to eat for six hours except an apple, which he had picked up by the roadside, and during those six hours he had walked not far from fifteen miles.
“I believe I never was so hungry before,” thought Philip. “The question is, where is my supper to come from?”
Although he knew pretty well the state of his finances, he began to search his pockets to see if he could not somewhere find a stray dime, or, better still, a quarter, with which to purchase the meal of which he stood so much in need. But his search was unproductive, or, rather, it only resulted in the discovery of a battered cent.
“So that penny constitutes my whole fortune,” thought Philip.