A Debt of Honor

“Are you traveling alone?”

“No, sir. I am with an English gentleman, Mr. Noel Brooke.”

“His servant. I suppose.”

“No, sir; I am his private secretary.”

“Private secretary! Couldn’t he find a person better qualified for the position than a beardless boy from the hills of Colorado?”

“I presume he could,” answered Gerald coldly, “but he seems to be satisfied with me.”

“How long since you left home?”

“Two or three months.”

“Do you still own the cabin in which your father lived?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You had better sell it. I am ready to pay you a fair price.”

“I don’t care to sell it, Mr. Wentworth.”

“Humph! You are very foolish.”

“Perhaps so, but I shall not sell it at present. Is your son well?”

This question Gerald asked partly out of politeness, partly because he wished to change the subject.

A gloom overspread the face of Bradley Wentworth. It was a sore point with him. For a moment he forgot his dislike for Gerald and answered: “My son Victor is giving me a good deal of trouble. He ran away from school more than two months ago.”

“And haven’t you heard from him since?” asked Gerald in quick sympathy.

“No, but I have not taken any special pains to find him.”

“You will forgive him, won’t you?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Wentworth with a sigh, “but I thought it best for him to reap the consequences of his folly. Perhaps I have waited too long. Now I have no clew to his whereabouts.”

“Did he go away alone?” asked Gerald, interested.

“No, he was accompanied by one of his schoolmates, Arthur Grigson. He had but little money. I thought when that gave out he would come home, or at any rate communicate with me. But I have heard nothing of him,” concluded Wentworth gloomily.

“I am sorry for you, Mr. Wentworth,” said Gerald earnestly. “Have you a picture of Victor with you?”

“Yes,” and Wentworth drew from his inside pocket a cabinet photograph of a boy whose face was pleasant, but seemed to lack strength.

“I suppose you have met no such boy in your travels,” said the father.

“No, but I may do so. If so I will try to get him to go home, and at any rate I will communicate with you.”

Mr. Wentworth seemed to be somewhat softened by Gerald’s sympathy, but he was not an emotional man, and business considerations succeeded his gentler mood.

“Have you got with you the papers I spoke of when we parted?” he asked with abruptness.

“They are safe,” returned Gerald.

“Do you carry them around with you?”

“I must decline to answer that question,” answered Gerald.

“You are an impertinent boy!”

“How do you make that out?”

“In refusing to answer me.”

“If it were a question which you had a right to expect an answer to, I would tell you.”

“I have a right to an answer.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, let that go. I will give you a thousand dollars for the papers, not that they are worth it, but because your father was an early friend of mine, and it will give me an excuse for helping his son.”

“If your intention is kind I thank you, but for the present I prefer to keep the papers.”

“Is the man you are traveling with rich?”

“I have reason to think he is.”

“Humph!”

Bradley Wentworth walked away, but kept Gerald under his eye. Soon he saw him promenading with Mr. Brooke, and apparently on very cordial and intimate terms with him.

“The man seems to be a gentleman,” reflected Wentworth, “but he can’t be very sharp to let an uneducated country boy worm himself into his confidence. It doesn’t suit my plans at all. I may get a chance to injure Gerald in his estimation.”

Later in the day he met Noel Brooke promenading the deck.

“A pleasant day, sir,” said Wentworth politely.

“Yes, sir,” answered the English tourist courteously.

“You are an Englishman, I judge?”

“Yes, sir. I presume I show my nationality in my appearance.”

“Well, yes. However, I was told you were English.”