Every cloud was gone from the sky, swept away to return no more. Ben Stone, whose appearance in Oakdale had been so unfavorable, whose days there had been so filled with trouble and strife, found himself the hero of the village and the coveted friend of those lads who had once regarded him with doubt and aversion. When he and Jerry and Pilot departed, with Henry Bailey, who took the boys away until such time as Asher Rand’s affairs should be definitely settled and a guardian appointed for them, nearly every lad in the village, together with a number of the girls and not a few of the older citizens, accompanied them to the railway station.
“Ben,” said Roger Eliot, speaking for the party on the station platform, “we’re proud of you, and we hate to see you leave us. We need you on the eleven. It’s too bad you’re going away now.”
“My deduction is,” interrupted Sleuth Piper, “that he will come back.”
“Yes, boys,” promised Ben, with his hand grasping the iron rail of the passenger coach, “I shall come back if I can. I have talked about it with Mr. Bailey, and he thinks there will be no trouble in making the arrangements. I have had something of a scramble in Oakdale, but I like the place; for here at last I have found more friends that I ever knew before. Oh, yes, I’m coming back if I can.”
Then the train bore him away.
He did come back. In less than two weeks he returned to finish his course at the academy, stopping, as before, at the home of the Widow Jones, but now having the best room in the house.
