Looking back at the old farm house once, before turning the bend in the road, he had a glimpse of old Arad driving furiously out of the yard.
“He is going to see his familiar spirit, Holt,” muttered Don, with a smile, “and lots of good may it do him. I’ll be in town before they catch me, and Judge Ebenezer Holt isn’t anywhere near as big a man in town as he is here. I’ll risk all the harm they can do me now.”
He arrived at Rockland in time for the stage to Hope, and at the latter village took the train for Providence. Neither his uncle nor Holt had appeared, and he made up his mind that he was well rid of them.
Once aboard the cars he settled himself back in his seat, and drew forth the scrap of newspaper which had dropped from the old sailor’s note case the day before. He read it through again carefully.
“I’ve got nearly fifty dollars (wouldn’t uncle be crazy if he knew it?) and although that isn’t a fortune, still it ought to keep me for some time,” he thought. “But, the question is, after I pump all I can out of that Wetherbee, what had I better do?”
He mused a moment in silence, and then took up the connected train of his reflections again.
“Fifty dollars ought to last me quite a spell—and take me quite a way, too. Of course, I can’t hire a boat in New York to go in search of the Silver Swan with it; but I can watch the Hydrographic Office reports, and find out in what general direction the brig’s headed. Then I’ll get as near to her as possible and see—what I shall see!
“I’d give a cent” (probably he would have given a good deal more) “if this Wetherbee was a different sort of a man. It’s a mystery to me how father ever trusted the fellow. I always supposed that father had a keen insight into human nature; but a man will be deceived at times, I suppose.
“But I won’t let this treasure idea keep me from going to work, and working hard, too. If I don’t get the money, why I don’t want to be roaming about the world like Uncle Anson, with nothing to do in life but hunt for wealth. I believe I’ll get a place on some vessel any way, for there’s a good deal of the sailor in me as there was in father. We get it from grandfather’s folks—the Brandons—I suppose.”
He arrived at Providence before noon, and spent the time until evening in looking about the business portion, of the city, and especially about the wharves. Then late in the afternoon he took the cars for New York, arriving in the metropolis at such an hour that to go to a hotel near the station seemed necessary.