CHAPTER XVII
SIMON WALTON had been away a week, and the force at the bank had not heard from him, when one morning Toby received a telegram from him dated that day in Atlanta. The carefully chosen ten words ran as follows:
“Meet me with horse and buggy at afternoon up train.”
So Toby went down to the old man's house, and, unassisted, got out the gaunt animal and the time-worn vehicle with the dilapidated leather hood, and drove to the station. He was in a fine glow of appreciation of the compliment implied by the telegram's being addressed solely to him, and by the additional fact that on returning from former journeys Walton had either walked home or taken the cars. Toby told himself, with no little unction, that it meant that his employer had something of a confidential nature to impart.
The train had scarcely come to a standstill when Simon, who was on the front platform of the first passenger-coach, sprang down, valise in hand, and, looking much the worse for the dust and fine cinders that lay on him like frost of the infernal regions, walked stiffly toward Toby and the buggy.
“Well, I see you got my wire,” was his greeting, as he relinquished the valise and allowed Toby to put it behind the seat in the buggy.
“Yes, I got it all right,” the clerk responded. “Shall we drive home or to the bank?”
Walton waited till Toby was in the seat beside him; then he replied: “Well, we may as well head for home, though I reckon we could take a sort o' roundabout direction through the edge of town. I want to tell you what I did out there, and we might not have as good a chance later. My wife will be nagging the life out of me for particulars, and while there are no particulars in this thing that she has any concern in, if I was to be cornered somewhere with you right at the start she'd think it strange. Then, on the other hand, if me and you slid off together the very minute I got to the bank, the rest might think I was partial, and so I thought this slow ride was the very idea.”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Walton. I suppose you saw Fred?”