"Wait a bit!" said Tommy Taft. He disappeared; but he soon came back, with an old pair of boots in one hand and a pair of pantaloons in the other.
"There's suthin' in the nigh pocket," he remarked, as he handed the pantaloons to his parent. "I've often s'posed you'd come back, and would need the money what I saved for you."
The parent, however, had not the courtesy to return thanks. He was more anxious to know something about Tom's employer and his whereabouts.
"He's a good one, he is," said Tommy Taft; "and no, he ain't to home. He's in ——; and I've got to meet him to-night in the tavern there—."
"In Hog's Lane?"
"Yes."
"Hylton has a heap o' money, Tommy."
"If he have or no, I don't reckon its none o' your business, or mine nuther."
The parent noticed the surly tone in which his son had just spoken, and concluded to say "good day," and to be off.
Tommy Taft wondered what could be the cause of so sudden a departure; and then he wondered whether, it really was his father that had so unexpectedly accosted him. He went back to his spade, and next wondered whether the man might not be an escaped convict. If so, how came he to know John Hylton?