"Well, can I help you in some way you will accept? I'm afraid—I don't mean to be unkind, but we may as well be frank—I'm afraid you won't need help very long."
Merton answered as one who has made up his mind to the inevitable, and Dave thought better of him. This little wreck of a man—this child in business matters—could look death in the face without a quiver.
"Not so long," he said. "I felt ever so much better when I came here first; I thought I was really going to be well again. But when I found what a mistake I had made I began to worry, not for myself, you know, but the boy, and worry is just what my trouble lives on. I have been working a little, and boarding out, and the boy is going to school. But I can't do heavy work, and work of any kind is hard to get. I find I can't keep going that way."
Merton looked with dreamy eyes through the office window, while Dave was turning over the hopelessness of his position, and inwardly cursing a system which made such conditions possible. Society protects the physically weak from the physically strong; the physical highwayman usually gets his deserts; but the mental highwayman preys upon the weak and the inexperienced and the unorganized, and Society votes him a good citizen and a success.
"I had a plan," Merton continued, half-apologetically, as though his plan did him little credit; "I had a plan, but it can't be worked out. I have been trying to raise a little money on my lots, but the mortgage people just look at me."
"What is your plan?" said Dave, kindly. "Any plan, no matter how bad, is always better than no plan."
"I thought," said Merton, timidly,—"I thought if I could build a little shack on the lots I could live there with the boy and we could raise a very fine garden. The soil is very fertile, and at least we should not starve. And the gardening would be good for me, and I could perhaps keep some chickens, and work out at odd jobs as well. But it takes money to build even a very small shack."
"How much money?" demanded Dave.
"If I had a hundred dollars——"
"Bring your title to me to-morrow; to me, personally, you understand. I'll advance you five hundred dollars."