“You permit this young cub to insult and abuse me,” persisted the magnate, as he bolted out of the front door, followed by his hopeful, who could not help shaking his fist at me as he went out.
“What have you done, Wolf?” exclaimed my mother, when they had gone.
“I have spoken the truth, like a man,” I replied, though I trembled for the consequences of my bold speech to the great man.
“He will discharge your father; and, now the money is gone, he will turn us out of house and home,” added my mother, beginning to cry again.
“I can’t help it. I have only told the truth, and I am not going to cower before that man and that boy any longer.”
I took my cap and left the house.
CHAPTER XI.
BETTER THOUGHTS AND DEEDS.
I left the house more to conceal my own emotions than for any other reason. I had been imprudent. My father was not only dependent upon Colonel Wimpleton for the excellent situation he held, which had enabled him to live well, to give me a good education, and to save money to buy his place, though there was a mortgage on the little estate that would expire in a few days; so far as liberality in financial matters was concerned, no one could find any fault with the magnate of Centreport.
I was accused of a crime—not merely of a piece of mischief, as the colonel was pleased to regard it, but of a crime whose penalty was imprisonment. By merely admitting the truth of the charge, I could escape all disagreeable consequences, and retain for my father and myself the favor of the mighty man in whose smile we had prospered and grown rich. Doubtless, in the worldly sense, I had been very imprudent. It would have been safer for me not to deny the accusation, and not to resent the hard names applied to me.