d was not likely to find out.

Meanwhile something happened in the counterfeiter's den, which was
destined to prove of advantage to Rufus.

Smith sent Humpy out on an errand. The boy was detained unavoidably, and
returned an hour later than he was expected. Smith was already in an
ill-temper, which the late return of his emissary aggravated.

"What made you so late?" he demanded, with lowering brow.

"I couldn't help it," said Humpy.

"Don't tell me that!" roared Smith. "You stopped to play on the way; I
know you did."

"No, I didn't," said Humpy, angrily.

"Do you dare to contradict me, you villanous little humpback?" screamed
Smith. "I'll teach you to do it again."

[Illustration: "I'LL TEACH YOU TO DO IT AGAIN."]

He clutched the boy by the collar, and, seizing a horsewhip, brought it
down with terrible force on the boy's shrinking form.

"Let me go! Don't beat me!" screamed Humpy, in mingled fear and rage.

"Not till I've cured you," retorted Smith. Twice more he struck the
humpbacked boy with the whip, and then threw him on the floor.

"That's what you get for contradicting me," he said.

The boy rose slowly and painfully, and limped out of the room. His face
was pale, but his heart was filled with a burning sense of humiliation
and anger against the man who had assaulted him. It would have been well
for Smith if he had controlled himself better, for the boy was not one
of the forgiving kind, but harbored resentment with an Indian-like
tenacity, and was resolved to be revenged.

He crawled upstairs to the small attic room in which he usually slept,
and, entering, threw himself upon the bed, face downward, where he burst
into a passion of grief, shame, and rage, which shook his crooked form
convulsively. This lasted for fifteen minutes, when he became more
quiet.

Then he got up slowly, and, going to a corner of the room, lifted up a
board from which the nails appeared to have been drawn out, and drew
from beneath a calico bag. This he opened, and exposed to view a
miscellaneous collection of coins, which he took out and counted.

"Twenty dollars and nineteen cents!" he said to himself. "I've been
more'n a year gettin' it. That boy offers me fifty dollars,--most three
times as much,--if I'll get him the tin box and help him to escape. I
said I wouldn't do it; but he hadn't struck me then. He hadn't called me
a villanous humpback. Now he's got to pay for it. He'll wish he hadn't
done it;" and the b