“You look like him, yet you don’t,” Jay murmured to himself; then leaning forward, he asked suddenly: “Be you any relation to Winthrop Porter?”
For a moment the boys stared at the old man in silence.
“Why, he was our father,” finally replied Phil.
“Glory be! I’ve found ’em at last! I’ve found ’em at last!” cried the old settler, in delight. “Just to think it was Porter’s boys I helped get their horse from Lem. That pays part of my debt and this will make up the balance, though I don’t reckon it will mean to you what it did to me.”
And fumbling in his pocket, Mr. Jay drew out an old and worn wallet, from which he took two hundred-dollar bills which he handed to Phil.
“I—I don’t understand,” returned the boy, gazing from the soiled bills to the old settler and then at the others.
“Thirty year ago, Winthrop Porter grubstaked me for two hundred. It’s a long story. But it gave me and Melissie our start. For five year I’ve been carrying them bills against meeting some one who could tell me where Winthrop Porter was. Joy, she writ when I first had ’em, but the letter was sent back stamped ‘Not known,’ so I callated he’d moved. Now me and Winthrop Porter is square, ’s fur as money is concerned.”
“But we can’t take this money, Mr. Jay,” protested Phil, recovering from his amazement. “If father let you have it, he gave it to you, he didn’t lend it.”
“Sure you will take it,” flared the old settler.
“Why not let the matter rest for a while?” suggested Ted.