had 'got into trouble;' that was your
excuse for keeping him from me. Or was that a lie, too?"

His manner changed and softened, but not for any pity for his companion,
but rather from some change in his own feelings. "Oh, that," he said,
with a rough laugh, "that was only a kind o' trouble any sassy kid like
him was likely to get into. You ain't got no call to hear that, for," he
added, with a momentary return to his previous manner, "the wrong that
was done him is MY lookout! You want to know what I did with him, how
he's been looked arter, and where he is? You want the worth of your
money. That's square enough. But first I want you to know, though you
mayn't believe it, that every red cent you've given me to-night goes to
HIM. And don't you forget it."

For all his vulgar frankness she knew he had lied to her many times
before,--maliciously, wantonly, complacently, but never evasively; yet
there was again that something in his manner which told her he was now
telling the truth.

"Well," he began, settling himself back in his chair, "I told you I
brought him to Heavy Tree Hill. After I left you I wasn't going to trust
him to no school; he knew enough for me; but when I left those parts
where nobody knew you, and got a little nearer 'Frisco, where people
might have known us both, I thought it better not to travel round with a
kid o' that size as his FATHER. So I got a young fellow here to pass him
off as HIS little brother, and look after him and board him; and I paid
him a big price for it, too, you bet! You wouldn't think it was a man
who's now swelling around here, the top o' the pile, that ever took
money from a brute like me, and for such schoolmaster work, too; but he
did, and his name was Van Loo, a clerk of the Ditch Company."

"Van Loo!" said the woman, with a movement of disgust; "THAT man!"

"What's the matter with Van Loo?" he said, with a coarse laugh, enjoying
his wife's discomfiture. "He speaks French and Spanish, and you oughter
hear the kid roll off the lingo he's got from him. He's got style, and
knows how to dress, and you ought to see the kid bow and scrape, and how
he carries himself. Now, Van Loo wasn't exactly my style, and I reckon I
don't hanker after him much, but he served my purpose."

"And this man knows"--she said, with a shudder.

"He knows Steptoe and the boy, but he don't know Horncastle nor YOU.
Don't you be skeert. He's the last man in the world who would hanker to
see me or th