“But it will be very lonely for you,” objected Frank.
“No; I shall have my thoughts for company. When I am alone I can think best of my future plans.”
“Won’t you come to our house to meals, then?”
“Thank you, Frank! I will do that.”
“When is the auction to be?”
“To-day is Monday. It is appointed for Thursday.”
“I hope there will be something left for you.”
“There will be about enough left to pay my father’s small debts and his funeral expenses. I would not like to have him indebted to others for those. I don’t think there will be anything over.”
Frank looked perplexed.
“I am sorry for you, Phil,” he said. “I wish we were rich, instead of having hard work to make both ends meet. You would not lack for anything then.”
“Dear Frank,” said Philip earnestly, “I never doubted your true friendship. But I am not afraid that I shall suffer. I am sure I can earn my living.”
“But why do you shut yourself up alone, Philip?” asked Frank, not satisfied to leave his friend in what he considered the gloomy solitude of a house just visited by death.
“I want to look over my father’s papers. I may find out something that I ought to know, and after the auction it will be too late. Father had some directions to give me, but he did not live long enough to do it. For three days I have the house to myself. After that I shall perhaps never visit it again.”
“Don’t be downhearted, Philip,” said Frank, pressing his hand with boyish sympathy.
“I don’t mean to be, Frank. I am naturally cheerful and hopeful. I shall miss my poor father sadly: but grieving will not bring him back. I must work for my living, and as I have no money to depend upon, I cannot afford to lose any time in forming my plans.”
“You will come over to our house and take your meals!”
“Yes, Frank.”
Frank Dunbar’s father was a small farmer, who, as Frank had said, found it hard work to make both ends meet. Among all the village boys, he was the one whom Philip liked best, though there were many others whose fathers were in hotter circumstances. For this, however, Philip cared little. Rich or poor, Frank suited him, and they had always been known as chums, to adopt the term used by the boys in the village.
It may be thought that as Philip’s circumstances were no better, such an intimacy was natural enough. But Philip Gray possessed special gifts, which made his company sought after. He was a fine singer, and played with considerable skill on the violin—an accomplishment derived from his father, who had acted as his teacher. Then he was of a cheerful temperament, and this is a gift which usually renders the possessor popular, unless marred by positive defects or bad qualities. There were two or three young snobs in the village who looked down upon Philip on account of his father’s poverty, but most were very glad to associate with our hero, and have him visit their homes. He was courteous to all, but made—no secret of his preference for Frank Dunbar.
When Philip parted from Frank, and entered the humble dwelling which had been his own and his father’s home for years, there was a sense of loneliness and desolation which came over him at first.
His father was the only relative whom he knew, and his death, therefore, left the boy peculiarly, alone in the world. Everything reminded him of his dead father. But he did not allow himself to dwell upon thoughts that would depress his spirits and unfit him for the work that lay before him.
He opened his father’s desk and began to examine his papers. There was no will, for there was nothing to leave, but in one compartment of the desk was a thick wallet, which he opened.
In it, among some receipted bills, was an envelope, on which was written, in his father’s well-known hand:
“The contents of this envelope are probably of no value, but it will be as well to preserve the certificate of stock. There is a bare possibility that it may some day be worth a trifle.”
Philip opened the envelope and found a certificate for a hundred shares of the Excelsior Gold Mine, which appeared to be located in California. He had once heard his father speak of it in much the same terms as above.
“I may as well keep it,” reflected Philip. “It will probably amount to nothing, but there won’t be much trouble in carrying around the envelope.” He also found a note of hand for a thousand dollars, signed by Thomas Graham.
Attached to it was a slip of paper, on which he read, also in his father’s writing:
“This note represents a sum of money lent to Thomas Graham, when I was moderately prosperous. It is now outlawed, and payment could not be enforced, even if Graham were alive and possessed the ability to pay. Five years since, he left this part of the country for some foreign country, and is probably dead, and I have heard nothing from him in all that time. It will do no harm, and probably no good, to keep his note.”
“I will keep it,” decided Philip. “It seems that this and the mining shares are all that father had to leave me. They will probably never yield me a cent, but I will keep them in remembrance of him.”
Phillip found his father’s watch. It was an old-fashioned gold watch, but of no great value even when new. Now, after twenty years’ use, it would command a very small price at the coming sale.
Ever since Philip had been old enough to notice anything, he remembered this watch, which was so closely identified with his father that more than anything else it called him to mind. Philip looked at it wistfully as it lay in his hand. “I wish I could keep it,” he said to himself. “No one else will value it much, but it would always speak to me of my father. I wonder if I might keep it?”
Philip had a mind to put it into his pocket, but the spirit of honesty forbade.
“It must be sold,” he said, with a sigh. “Without it there wouldn’t be enough to pay what we owe, and when I leave Norton, I don’t want any one to say that my father died in his debt.”
There was nothing else in the desk which called for particular notice or appeared to be of any special value. After a careful examination, Philip closed it and looked around at the familiar furniture of the few rooms which the house contained.
There was one object which he personally valued more than anything else. This was his violin, on which he had learned all that he knew of playing. His father had bought it for him four years before. It was not costly, but it was of good tone, and Philip had passed many pleasant hours in practicing on it.
“I can take this violin, at any rate,” said Philip to himself. “It belongs to me, and no one else has a claim on it. I think I will take it with me and leave it at Frank Dunbar’s, so that it needn’t get into the sale.”
He put back the violin into the case and laid it on one side. Then he sat down in the arm-chair, which had been his father’s favorite seat, and tried to fix his mind upon the unknown future which lay before him.
He had sat there for half an hour, revolving in his mind various thoughts and plans, when he heard a tap on the window, and looking up, saw through the pane the coarse, red face of Nick Holden, a young fellow of eighteen, the son of the village butcher.
“Let me in!” said Nick; “I want to see you on business.”
CHAPTER III. NICK HOLDEN’S CALL
Philip had never liked Nick Holden. He was a coarse, rough-looking boy, his reddish face one mass of freckles, and about as unattractive as a person could be, without absolute deformity. This, however, was not the ground for Philip’s dislike.
With all his unattractiveness, Nick might have possessed qualities which would have rightly made him popular. So far from this, however, he was naturally mean, selfish, and a bully, with very slight regard for truth.
Will it be believed that, in spite of his homely