"Hey! What----"
"And then give it to him to read," added Frank with a chuckle.
"Hemlock and asparagus!" ejaculated the farmer as his glance ran over the item. "A bunko man, eh? And I was nearly gulled!"
"Well, friend," spoke the swindler suavely, returning down the aisle, "how about that little loan? You'll have to decide quick, for this is my station they're coming to."
"I see 'tis," responded the farmer, arising with a grim face that should have warned the man, who had taken him for an easy victim. "Say, you measly, flaggerbusted scrub, read that!"
The farmer did not wait to have the swindler read the newspaper item. He only thrust it near enough to his discomfited face to allow the fellow to get an inkling of its meaning. Then his sinewy hand closed on the collar of the swindler's coat.
The train was slowing up just then, and a brake-man threw open the door of the coach with the announcement:
"Jayville!"
"I'm going to introduce you to the town," grinned the farmer. "Bolt, you varmint!"
He ran the fellow down the car, the other passengers arising from their seats in excitement. Straight through the open doorway he rushed the swindler, and out upon the platform. Arrived there, the farmer changed his mind. The depot was about two hundred feet ahead. Just where the coach was running was a deep ditch.
Frank saw the stalwart farmer lift his prisoner bodily, he heard a yell and then a splash, and saw the baffled swindler land waist-deep in the ditch, deluged, silk hat, white choker and dress coat, in a cascade of murky mud.
"My wife's cousin, the banker, and his friend, the mayor of the town, can help him out of that fix if they want to," chuckled the farmer, coming back into the car and rubbing his hands as if to wash the dirt from them.
CHAPTER IX
A BOY GUARDIAN
The conductor grinned and the passengers roared with laughter when the farmer explained the incident. Even the glum-faced stepson of the narrator roused up into some interest.
"Thankee, neighbor," spoke the farmer, effusively grasping Frank's hand.
"You're the right sort, sure enough--eyes wide open and up to snuff. Guess I'd better keep close to home after this. I ain't to be trusted along with them gold-brick fellows."
The old man took a great fancy to Frank and became quite confidential with him. He piled candy and peanuts on him from the train boy's supply, invited him to the farm, and wanted to know Frank's name so he could tell the folks about him.
"I am Frank Jordan, live at Tipton, and am bound for school at Bellwood,"
said Frank.
"Hey! how--what?" exclaimed the farmer explosively. "You don't mean to say that you're traveling to school, too?"
"Yes," replied Frank. "But who else do you mean?"
"Why, my son, Robert, over there--Robert Upton. Now, isn't it funny--he's going right to the very school you are?"
"To Bellwood?"
"That's the name--Bellwood is the place," assented Mr. Upton. "Wish you'd tell me what you know about it."
"I don't know anything about it, except what I've read and what I've heard from friends who went there," said Frank. But it seemed he had enough information to quite interest the farmer. Then the latter told him about his stepson.
"Robert's been no good at home," he said. "You can see what a sulky, unsociable fellow he is. No interest in nothing--thinks everybody hates him, and won't make up to anybody. He says he'll run away if I put him in school. If he does, I certainly will put him in the reformatory until he's of age."
Frank stole a rather pitying glance at the lad. The latter was hunched down in his seat, his hands rammed into his pockets, looking bored and miserable. Frank wondered what kind of a queer make-up his nature could be, to mope and scowl that bright, beautiful day, with the prospect of the useful chance for study and the gay life of schoolboy sport.
"Why, say," suddenly ejaculated Farmer Upton, starting under the spur of some exciting idea, "why can't Robert go with you to Bellwood?"
"He is doing so, isn't he?" said Frank with a smile.
"I mean why can't you sort of take charge of him and introduce him around, and save me the time and the expense. You see, if I go with him I can't get home until to-morrow. I can get off the train at Chester, and not buy any ticket to Bellwood, but go right back home. I've made all the arrangements for him by letter at Bellwood. The only reason I was going with him was to deliver him into the hands of the teachers and give them an inkling of what a troublesome fellow he is."
"Doesn't it strike you that that would hurt his chances with them and discourage him?" suggested Frank.
"I never thought of that."
"Excuse me, Mr. Upton," said Frank, "but maybe you're too hard on your stepson. It's hard to understand people, and a boy is a queer make-up. I will be glad to have him come with me to Bellwood, and I'll put myself out to make it agreeable for him."
"But he won't be agreeable; that's the trouble, you see," declared the farmer. "When he gets in one of them tantrums of his, you simply can't reason with him."
"Well, I'll take charge of him, if you don't wish to make the long journey, Mr. Upton."
"I'll never know how to thank you, if you will," said the farmer gratefully. "Hi, there, Robert."
"Me?" droned the boy in the seat across the aisle.
"Who else do you suppose?" snapped his stepfather testily. "Come, rout out there, or I'll unhitch a strap somewhere and make you step lively."
Frank made up his mind that he would interest himself in the drifting waif of a fellow. As he thought of the big, husky farmer and his houseful of grown sons and daughters, he wondered if in their rough, unthinking way they had not quite broken the spirit of the motherless lad in their midst.
"Sit down here," ordered the farmer, turning the seat so it faced Frank.
"This boy is going to Bellwood, Robert. He's agreed to take you along with him, and I'm going back home."
Robert shot a glance of dislike and suspicion at Frank, as if he was a link in a chain of jailers waiting for him along the line of life.
"You behave yourself along with him down at the academy, or I'll put you in the reform school," threatened the farmer harshly.
"Oh, give Bob something to think of that's pleasant," put in Frank cheerily. "It's a scary thing for a fellow, first time he goes among strangers. I'm bracing up myself to meet the rollicking, mischief-making crowd at Bellwood, who will just be lying in wait to guy us and haze us.
We'll stand together, Bob, hey? and give them good as they send," and Frank slapped the lad on the shoulder, with a ringing laugh.
"They won't haze me," muttered Bob.
"Yes, they will, and then you and I will lay around to haze the new fellows who came after us," cried Frank. "Ha! ha! you'll see some fun down at Bellwood, Bob. They're a capital set of fellows, I'm told. We'll make the best of them, anyhow, and the best of ourselves. Come, friend Bob, we'll stick together and get all the fun out of life we can. Chums, is it?"
Frank was irresistible in his cheery, open-hearted good nature. Bob was ashamed to refuse his hand, but the set, glum look on his face did not lighten.
They had to change cars at a place called Chester. The farmer gave Frank minute instructions as to his charge. He went over his "perky meanness" in all its details, and he said to his stepson at parting: