“Probably you could after you had had some experience.”
They went away, and I wondered what they were thinking about. It did not much matter, however, for I was satisfied that the major would not permit them to run the engine till they had become thoroughly competent to do so. I put out the fires in the dummy, cleaned the machinery, and left her in readiness for use the next morning. I then went to the mills; and, as my father had finished his day’s work, we walked down to the wharf where my skiff lay. On the way I told him about my interview with Colonel Wimpleton, and we both enjoyed the great man’s confusion when he learned in what manner he had punished my father.
“He will not arrest you, Wolf; you may depend upon that,” said my father. “As the case now stands, we have the weather-gauge on him, except in the matter of the mortgage. I am afraid I shall lose all I have in the house. Mortimer has got back, but he hasn’t seen or heard of Christy.”
“He may turn up yet.”
“He may, but I don’t depend much upon it. I have tried a little here in Middleport to raise the money to pay off the mortgage; but people here will not lend anything on real estate on the other side of the lake.”
“Perhaps Major Toppleton will help you out,” I suggested.
“I don’t like to say anything to him about it. He has done well by me, and I won’t ride a free horse to death; besides, I don’t want to be in the power of either one of these rich men. I have had trouble enough on the other side.”
I pulled across the lake, and we went into the house. My mother looked anxiously at my father as he entered, and then at me. I smiled, and she understood me. Father had not drunk a drop, and she was happy. We never relished our supper any better than we did that night, and I went to bed early, not a little surprised that we heard nothing, during the evening, of Colonel Wimpleton and his son.
The dummy was to make her first trip at eight o’clock, and I left the house at half-past six, with my father, to cross the lake. When we reached the wharf, I was utterly confounded to see the dummy streaking it at the rate of twenty miles an hour along the opposite shore of the lake. Something was wrong, for there was no one on the other side who knew how to run the machine, unless it was Faxon, and I was afraid the discontented Toppletonians were in mischief. We embarked in the skiff, and I pulled over as quickly as I had done the day before.