nothing more to fear from the “hant” which had so long occupied all his waking thoughts and disturbed his dreams at night, he would not have taken one step toward Mr. Warren’s house before morning, had he not been urged on by the hope that the sheriff would be ready to pay over his money as soon as the robber was given up to him. The desire to handle the reward to which he was entitled was stronger than his fear of the dark.
“And what shall I do with them twenty-five hundred after I get ’em, Joey?” said he. “That’s what’s a-bothering of me now.”
And it was the very thing that was bothering Joe, also. His father had always been in the habit of spending his money as fast as he got it, and the boy fully expected to see this large sum slip through his fingers without doing the least good to him or anybody else.
“I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do with it,” said Joe, after a little hesitation. “I wouldn’t give Hobson any of it.”
“You’re right I won’t!” exclaimed Silas. “He’s got more’n his share already. What be you going to do with yours, when you get it?”
“I think now that I shall put it in the bank at Hammondsport,” answered Joe. “It will be safe there, and if I am careful of it, it will last me until I get through going to school. You don’t want to go to school, but you might go into business and increase your capital.”
“That’s it—that’s it, Joey!” exclaimed Silas, who grew enthusiastic at once. “I never thought of that. But what sort of business? It must be something easy, ’cause I’ve worked hard enough already.”
“Mr. Warren says that there is no easy way of making a living,” began Joe; but his father interrupted him with an exclamation of impatience.
“What does old man Warren know about it?” he demanded. “He never had to do a hand’s turn in his life.”
“But he don’t know what it is to be idle, and he is busy at something every day,” said Joe. “I’ll tell you what I have often thought I would do if I had a little money, and I may do it yet, if you don’t decide to go into it. The new road that is coming through here is bound to bring a good many people to the Beach, sooner or later. As the trout are nearly all gone, the guests will have to devote their attention to the bass in the lake, and consequently there will be a big demand for boats.”