The Vision Splendid | Page 3

hardships of the service. Rumors had drifted to him that the taste for liquor acquired in camp as an antidote for sickness had grown upon his comrade and finally overcome him. From Jeff he learned that after his father's death the widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were at ebb tide.
"Did . . . did you know father very well?" Jeff asked tremulously.
Chunn looked down at the thin dark face of the boy walking beside him and was moved to lay a hand on his shoulder. He understood the ache in that little heart to hear about the father who was a hero to him. Jeff was of no importance in the alien world about him. The Captain guessed from the little scene he had witnessed that the lad trod a friendless, stormy path. He divined, too, that the hungry soul was fed from within by dreams and memories.
So Lucius Chunn talked. He told about the slender, soldierly officer in gray who had given himself so freely to serve his men, of the time he had caught pneumonia by lending his blanket to a sick boy, of the day he had led the charge at Battle Creek and received the wound which pained him so greatly to the hour of his death. And Jeff drank his words in like a charmed thing. He visualized it all, the bitter nights in camp, the long wet marches, the trumpet call to battle. It was this last that his imagination seized upon most eagerly. He saw the silent massing of troops, the stealthy advance through the woods; and he heard the blood-curdling rebel yell as the line swept forward from cover like a tidal wave, with his father at its head.
Captain Chunn was puzzled at the coldness with which Mr. Webber listened to his explanation of what had taken place. The school principal fell back doggedly upon one fact. It would not have happened if Jeff had not been playing truant. Therefore he was to blame for what had occurred.
Nothing would be done, of course, without a thorough investigation.
The Captain was not satisfied, but he did not quite see what more he could do.
"The boy is a son of an old comrade of mine. We were in the war together. So of course I have to stand by Jeff," he pleaded with a smile.
"You were in the rebel army?" The words slipped out before the schoolmaster could stop them.
"In the Confederate army," Chunn corrected quietly.
Webber flushed at the rebuke. "That is what I meant to say."
"I leave to-morrow for Alaska. It would be pleasant to know before I go that Jeff is out of his trouble."
"I'm afraid Jeff always will be in trouble. He is a most insubordinate boy," the principal answered coldly.
"Are you sure you quite understand him?"
"He is not difficult to understand." Webber, resenting the interference of the Southerner as an intrusion, disposed of the matter in a sentence. "I'll look into this matter carefully, Mr. Chunn."
Webber called immediately at the office of Edward B. Merrill, president of the tramway company and of the First National Bank. It happened that the vice-president of the bank was a school director; also that the funds of the district were kept in the First National. The schoolteacher did not admit that he had come to ingratiate himself with the powers that ruled his future, but he was naturally pleased to come in direct touch with such a man as Merrill.
The financier was urbane and spent nearly half an hour of his valuable time with the principal. When the latter rose to go they shook hands. The two understood each other thoroughly.
"You may depend upon me to do my duty, Mr. Merrill, painful though such a course may be to me."
"I am very glad to have met you, Mr. Webber. It is a source of satisfaction to me that our educational system is in the care of men of your stamp. I leave this matter with confidence entirely in your hands. Do what you think best."
His confidence was justified. After school opened next morning Jeff was called up and publicly thrashed for playing truant. As a prelude to the corporal punishment the principal delivered a lecture. He alluded to the details of the fight gravely, with selective discrimination, giving young Farnum to understand that he had reached the end of his rope. If any more such brutal affairs were reported to him he would be punished severely.
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