"I think he fell into bad company, sir."
"Of course he did; idlers always fall into bad company. A young fellow must have a taste for bad company before he can be led a great ways out of the right track. The first bad company a young fellow keeps is himself. If he don't begin there, he won't begin anywhere else. Those are my sentiments."
Mr. Clinch talked to me while I was preparing to go to the station-house; and when I was ready I hastened to the place appointed. I found Mr. Rockwood and both the Gracewoods there, with Lynch and Blair in irons. They looked pitiable enough now. They had been arrested at the very moment when they considered themselves entirely successful in their wicked enterprise, and of course the shock of disaster was very heavy.
"You are an old one, Phil Farringford," said Lynch, with a sickly smile. "You have brought me to grief finally. If I can get out of this scrape, I don't know but I should be willing to go to a prayer-meeting with you."
"It would do you good," I replied. "Why were you so determined to rob me, Lynch?"
"Because I thought you were a great deal fatter pullet than you turned out to be. I heard you and that gentleman," he added, pointing to Mr. Henry Gracewood, "talking pretty large about your money. As you exhibited some of it, I was satisfied that you really had the gold, and I thought it would do me more good than it would you. However, you were so full of fight that I gave it up till you vexed me so here in the city. After I had given you back your hundred dollars, I was determined to be even with you. Then I followed, and made the acquaintance of my good friend Morgan Blair."
"Yes; and I wish you had been at the bottom of the Mississippi before I had ever seen you," blubbered Blair, his eyes filling with tears.
"After listening to that highly interesting story about the Rockwoods, I decided that my friend Blair should be the last of the Rockwoods. You were very obstinate, Phil; very. After that affair at the station-house, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Gracewood. I supposed, at first, that he was the one who had signed that note of yours, Phil. I wanted the note then, but I soon found that I was mistaken. About the same time I found the wounded man had a large sum of money upon him, and I was more anxious to get this. I told Mr. Gracewood that I knew a young man who had seen his brother, and then I got the whole story."