“Look here, Stone,” he said urgingly, with an air of sincere friendliness, “take me into your confidence and tell me what is the trouble between you and Bern Hayden. Perhaps I can help you some way, and it won’t do any harm for you to trust me. You saved my little sister from old Fletcher’s dogs, and I want to do something for you. I want to be your friend.”
Ben could not doubt the honest candor of his companion, but he shrunk from unbosoming himself, dreading to narrate the unpleasant story of the events which had made both Bern Hayden and his father his uncompromising enemies and had forced him to flee like a criminal from his native village in order to escape being sent to the State Reformatory.
“Trust me, Stone,” pleaded Roger. “I don’t believe you’ll ever regret it.”
“All right!” exclaimed Ben suddenly; “I will—I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER X.
STONE’S STORY.
“That’s right,” cried Roger, with satisfaction, resuming his seat. “Tell me the whole business. Fire away, old man.”
As Ben seemed hesitating over the beginning of the story, Roger observed that, with an apparently unconscious movement, he once more lifted his hand to his mutilated ear. At that moment Eliot was struck with the conviction that the story he was about to hear was concerned with the injury to that ear.
“At the very start,” said Ben, an uncomfortable look on his plain face, “I have to confess that my father was always what is called a shiftless man. He was more of a dreamer than a doer, and, instead of trying to accomplish things, he spent far too much time in meditating on what he might accomplish. He dreamed a great deal of inventing something that would make his fortune, and this led him to declare frequently that some day he would make a lot of money. He was not a bad man, but he was careless and neglectful, a poor planner and a poor provider. The neighbors called him lazy and held him in considerable contempt.