"Why, I'm big enough to do the haying," urged John Ellison. "You've got the mill now. You might give me a job, I think."
Possibly some thought of this kind might have found fleeting lodgment in the colonel's brain; of Jim Ellison, who used to sit at the desk in the corner; of the son that now asked him for work. Then a crafty, suspicious light came into his eyes, and he glanced quickly at John Ellison's companion.
"What do you want here, Henry Burns?" he demanded. "I had you in my hotel at Samoset Bay once, and you brought me bad luck. You get out. I don't want you around here. Get out, I say."
He moved threateningly toward Henry Burns, and the boy, seeing it was useless to try to remain, stepped outside.
"No, I don't want you, either," said Colonel Witham, turning abruptly now to John Ellison. "No boys around this mill. I don't care if your father did own it. You can't work here. I've no place for you."
Despite his blustering and almost threatening manner, however, Colonel Witham did not offer to thrust John Ellison from the mill. He seemed on the point of doing it, but something stopped him. He couldn't have told what. But he merely repeated his refusal, and turned away.
It was only boyish impulse on John Ellison's part, and an innocent purchaser of the mill would have laughed at him; but he stepped nearer to Colonel Witham and said, earnestly, "You'll have to let me in here some day, Colonel Witham. The mill isn't yours, and you know it." And he added, quickly, as the thought occurred to him, "Perhaps the fortune-teller you saw at the circus will tell me more than she told you. Perhaps she'll tell me where the papers are."
For a moment Colonel Witham's heavy face turned deathly pale, and he leaned for support against one of the beams of the mill. Then the colour came back into his face with a rush, and he stamped angrily on the floor.
"Confound you!" he cried. "You clear out, too. I don't know anything about your fortune-tellers, and I don't care. I've got no time to fool away with boys. Now get out."
John Ellison walked slowly to the door, leaving the colonel mopping his face and turning alternately white and red; and as he stepped outside Colonel Witham dropped into a chair.