Edwards had hired as a drover, and
abruptly discharged, was spreading stories about his former
employer which made Blackbeard, the pirate, seem like a babe by
comparison. Pete was not a very credible witness; but still,
building upon a suspicion that already existed, he succeeded in
adding something to its substantiality.

These stories had come to Jim's ears, and Jim was delighted. The
consideration that, were the stories true, his father was a criminal
did not occur to him at all. Like the foolish, romantic boy he was,
he was simply pleased to think of his father as a man of iron
determination, cool wit, unshakable courage, whom no deputy sheriff
could over-match, and who was leading a life full of excitement and
danger--the smuggler king! The only thing that Jim regretted was
that his father did not let him share in these exploits. He knew he
could be useful! But his father's manner was habitually so
forbidding that Jim did not dare hint a knowledge of these probable
undertakings, much less any desire to share them.

Poor Mr. Edwards! He loved his boy, but did not in the least know
how to show it. Silent, with a sternness of demeanor which he was
unable wholly to lay aside even in his friendliest moments, much
away from home, and unable to meet the boy on his own level when he
was there, deprived of the wife who might have been his interpreter,
he had no way of becoming acquainted with his son. Anxious in some
way to share in Jim's life, he took the clumsy and mistaken method
of letting him have too much pocket-money.

Yet if Jim, thus unguided and overindulged, had gone astray in his
conduct, Mr. Edwards was not the man to know his mistake and take
the blame. He had in him a rigidity of moral judgment, a dryness of
mind which made it certain that if Jim did do what he disapproved,
he would visit upon him a punishment at once severe and
unsympathetic. The man's air of cold strength excited in the son
fear as well as admiration; his reserve kept his naturally
affectionate boy at more than arm's length. Poor Mr. Edwards! Poor
Jim! Misunderstanding between them was as sure to occur as the rise
of to-morrow's sun.

Pat on Jim's speculations about his father's stirring deeds, the
gunshot came echoing through the silent barn. Jim ran to the loft
door and looked out. He saw smoke curling up from the window of his
"den," and knew that it was his own gun that had been fired. Back in
the room, a vague masculine figure m