When Walter reached his boarding house his landlady met him in the entry. She seemed quite flustered and embarrassed. "Oh, Mr. Seabury," she began, "I'm so glad you've come! Such a time! There has been an officer here tossing everything topsy-turvy in your room. He would do it, in spite of all I could say. I told him you were the best boarder of the lot; never out late nights, or coming home the worse for liquor, and always prompt pay. Do you think, he told me to shut up, and mind my own business. Oh, sir, what is the matter? That ever a nasty policeman should came ransacking in my house. Goodness alive! why, if it gets out, I'm a ruined woman. Please, sir, couldn't you find another boarding place?"
This was the last straw for poor Walter. Without a word he crept upstairs to his little bedroom, threw himself down on the bed, and cried as if his heart would break.
Walter was young. Conscious innocence helped him to throw off the fit of despondency; but in so far as feeling goes, he was ten years older when he came out of it. It was quite dark. Lighting a lamp, he hastily threw a few things into a bag, scribbled a short note to his aunt, inclosing the check received when he was discharged, settled with the landlady, who was in tears, always on tap; took his bag under his arm, and after satisfying himself that the coast was clear, struck out a roundabout course, through crooked ways and blind alleys, to the wharf. For the life of him, he could not keep back a little bitter laugh when he called to mind that this was the second time in his short life that he had run away.
The wharf was deserted. There was no light in the caboose; but upon Walter's giving three cautious raps, the door was slid back, and as quickly closed after him. "Well," he said, wearily throwing himself down on a bench, "here I am again. I've been turned out of doors now. You are my only friend left. What would you do, if you were in my place? I can't bear it, and I won't," he broke out impulsively.
"I see," said Bill, meditatively shutting both eyes, to give emphasis to the assertion.
"Nobody will give me a place now, with a cloud like that hanging over me."
Bill nodded assent.
"I can't go back to the loft where I worked before, to be pointed at and jeered at by every duffer who may take it into his head to throw this scrape in my face. Would you?"
As Bill made no reply, but smoked on in silence, Walter exclaimed, almost fiercely, "Confound it, man, say something! can't you? You drive me crazy with all the rest."
This time Bill shook the ashes from his pipe. "What would I do? Why, if it was me I'd track the rascal to the eends of the airth, and jump off arter him, but I'd have him. And arter I'd cotched him, I'd twist his neck just as quick as I would a pullet's," was Bill's quiet but determined reply.