"I went off, after I left you, by the Pacific Railway—not the first time I travelled up and down that line—and I landed in New York. Mr. Colquhoun gave me a rig out, and you, sir,"—he nodded to Jack—"you, sir, gave me the stamps to pay the ticket."
Jack, accused of this act of benevolence, naturally blushed a guilty acknowledgment.
Mr. Gilead P. Beck made no reference to the gift either then or at any subsequent period. Nor did he ever offer to repay it, even when he discovered the slenderness of Jack's resources. That showed that he was a sensitive and sympathetic man. To offer a small sum of money in repayment of a free gift from an extraordinarily rich man to a very poor one is not a delicate thing to do. Therefore this gentleman of the backwoods abstained from doing it.
"New York City," he continued, "is not the village I should recommend to a man without dollars in his pocket. London, where there is an institootion, or a charity, or a hospital, or a workhouse, or a hot-soup boiler in every street, is the city for that gentleman. Fiji, p'r'aps, for one who has a yearning after bananas and black civilisation. But not New York. No, gentlemen; if you go to New York, let it be when you've made your pile, and not before. Then you will find out that there air thirty theatres in the city, with lovely and accomplished actresses in each, and you can walk into Delmonico's as if the place belonged to you. But for men down on their luck, New York is a cruel place.
"I left that city, and I made my way North. I wanted to see the old folks I left behind long ago in Lexington; I found them dead, and I was sorry. Then I went farther North. P'r'aps I was driven by the yellow toy hanging at my back. Anyhow, it was only six weeks after I left you that I found myself in the city of Limerick on Lake Ontario.
"You do not know the city of Limerick, I dare say. It was not famous, nor was it pretty. In fact, gentlemen, it was the durndest misbegotten location built around a swamp that ever called itself a city. There were a few delooded farmers trying to persuade themselves that things would look up; there were a few down-hearted settlers wondering why they ever came there, and how they would get out again; and there were a few log-houses in a row which called themselves a street.
"I got there, and I stayed there. Their carpenter was dead, and I am a handy man; so I took his place. Then I made a few dollars doing chores around."
"What are chores?"
"All sorts. The clocks were out of repair; the handles were coming off the pails; the chairs were without legs; the pump-handle crank; the very bell-rope in the meetin' house was broken. You never saw such a helpless lot. I did not stay among them because I loved them, but because I saw things."
"Ghosts?" asked Ladds, with an eye to the supernatural.