Chapter XIII. Eben's Last Hope Fails - Page 2

at the hotel, from whom he had sought a position as companion.

"Then I shall have to leave Wayneboro," he said; "there's nothing to do here."

"Yes, there is; Farmer Collins wants a hired man."

"A hired man!" repeated Eben, scornfully. "Do you think I am going--to hire out on a farm?"

"You might do a great deal worse," answered Ebenezer, sensibly.

"After being a dry-goods salesman in Boston, I haven't got down to that, I beg to assure you," said Eben, with an air of consequence.

"Then you will have to work in the store if you expect to stay at home," said his father. "And hark you, Eben Graham," he added, "don't report any more losses of money or stamps. I make you responsible for both."

Eben went back to his work in an uneasy frame of mind. He saw that he had not succeeded in imposing upon his father, and that the clear-sighted old gentleman strongly suspected where the missing articles had gone. Eben might have told, had he felt inclined, that the five-dollar bill had been mailed to a lottery agent in New York in payment for a ticket in a Southern lottery, and that the stamps were even now in his possession, and would be sold at the first opportunity. His plan to throw suspicion upon Herbert had utterly failed, and the cold looks with which he had been greeted showed what the villagers thought of his attempt.

"I won't stay in Wayneboro much longer," Eben inwardly resolved. "It's the dullest hole in creation. I can get along somehow in a large place, but here there's positively nothing. Hire out on a farm, indeed! My father ought to be ashamed to recommend such a thing to his only son, when he's so well off. If he would only give me two hundred dollars, I would go to California and trouble him no more. Plenty of people make money in California, and why shouldn't I? If that ticket draws a prize--"

And then Eben went into calculations of what he would do if only he drew a prize of a thousand dollars. That wasn't too much to expect, for there were several of that amount, and several considerably larger. He pictured how independent he would be with his prize, and how he would tell his father that he could get along without him, displaying at the same time a large roll of bills. When he reached California he could buy an interest in a mine, and perhaps within three or four years he could return home twenty times as rich as his father. It was pleasant to think over all this, and almost to persuade himself that the good luck had actually come. However, he must wait a few days, for the ticket had not yet come, and the lottery would not be drawn for a week.

The ticket arrived two days later; Eben took care to slip the envelope into his pocket without letting his father or anyone else see it, for unpleasant questions might have