CHAPTER XVIII. DO THE DEAD LIVE?

“I WISH you were going with me, Mr. Darke,” said Tom, as he sat in that gentleman’s room at the Astor House, making his farewell call.

He had made all arrangements, seen his mother and sister installed in the comfortable farm-house of Hiram Bacon, had procured a modest outfit, and was ready to start for the Pacific coast. He felt that it was a great undertaking for a boy of fifteen, and he longed for the championship of some one whom he knew, even but slightly.

Darius Darke shook his head.

“I have had enough of California!” he answered. “There I met with sorrow and losses. It will be long before I care to see it again.”

“Shall you stay in New York, Mr. Darke?”

“In a week from to-day I start for Europe, to be absent for a year.”

Tom looked surprised.

“Are you going on business?” he asked.

“No. I am going on a tour of pleasure. It seems strange to me, who have been a penniless tramp for two years, that I can really afford this journey.”

“You must enjoy it all the better for that,” said Tom.

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“I do. By the way, my good fortune still follows me. I have been following up the stock market, and the tide has been with me. I am now worth ten thousand dollars.”

“It seems like magic,” said Tom.

“I have played a hazardous game, and won. Now I have withdrawn for good. This very morning I invested my money in good dividend-paying stocks, and now I can leave America with a mind free from anxiety. By the way, if you need more money, draw on me.”

“Thank you sir,” said Tom, gratefully, “but there is no occasion. My mother and sister are well provided for, and I shall only need to leave a hundred dollars with them. I have spent sixty for clothes for them and myself, and that leaves me three hundred and forty.”

“Shall you take it all with you?”

“No; I shall leave a hundred and fifty in the bank, and get along on the remainder. I don’t want to spend it all on what may prove a wild-goose chase.”

“You are prudent; but are you not afraid of running short of money?”

“No; I am going to work my passage partly. I am in no hurry. If I can get anything to do on the way I will accept it.”

“I think you’ll get along,” said Darius Darke. “You have good common sense ideas. By the way, hasn’t John Simpson got a son?”

“Yes, a boy of about my own age.”

“What sort of a boy is he?”

“He is not a friend of mine, and I might speak too110 harshly of him,” said Tom. “He knows that his father is rich and he puts on airs accordingly.”

“How does he treat you?”

“He looks down upon me—says I am a low shoe-pegger. He doesn’t think me fit to associate with him.”

“The time may come when he will have to look up to you. Patience, Tom! You may be as rich as his father some day.”

“I don’t want to be rich unless I can get money honestly.”

“Stick to that, Tom. I haven’t led a model life. I’ve made mistakes, and committed errors, but I don’t look upon them now as I once did. I have turned over a new leaf, and I mean to do what I can to redeem myself.”

Before the two new friends parted, Darius Darke gave Tom an address in New York, where he could direct any communication. It was at the office of Mellish & Co., already referred to.

“They will have orders to forward letters home,” said Darke. “If you get into trouble, or if you make any important discoveries write to me. Bear in mind that I am deeply interested in your success.”

“Thank you, Mr. Darke.”

“Now, good-by, Tom, and God bless you.”

Leaving Tom till the next chapter, we devote a few additional lines to Darius Darke and John Simpson.

The shoe manufacturer was thoroughly persuaded that his dreaded enemy was safely and finally disposed of. He entertained not a doubt that he had perished in111 the flames that consumed the old barn. True, he had not been able to discover any bones among the ruins, and this puzzled him considerably.

“I suppose,” he concluded, “that the fire must have been so intense that the bones as well as the flesh were entirely consumed. It must have been so. The man had no chance to escape, or, if he had, I should have heard from him before now. I have seen the last of him.”

This thought gave John Simpson no little satisfaction. It might have been supposed that he would feel some compunction in reflecting upon the awful fate to which he had consigned a fellow-creature; but a cowardly man becomes easily cruel, and the feeling of relief outweighed the horror of the crime.

It was during the last week of Darius Darke’s stay in New York that John Simpson came up to transact a little business. It was on Wednesday, and, having time to spare, he dropped into a matinee performance at one of the theaters.

In the interval between the second and third acts he chanced to look around him, and his heart gave a painful bound as his eyes rested on a man of about his own age seated not far from him.

“Do the dead live?” he asked himself, in dismay. “That looks like the man who I thought was burned in my barn.”

John Simpson had a good memory for faces, and though Mr. Darke was handsomely dressed, and looked like a man of ample means, very different from the dilapidated tramp who had called upon him three weeks112 before, an uneasy suspicion haunted him that this was the man.

“I must satisfy myself,” he said. “I must find out if that is the man who called upon me in Wilton.”

He left his seat, and advanced to where Darius Darke was sitting.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but I think you called upon me not long since.”

Luckily Darius Darke had noticed his approach (till then he had not seen him) and was on his guard.

“Sare,” he said, in broken English, shrugging his shoulders, “I know you not. I am one Frenchman, who make one leetle visit to New York on business.”

The voice which he assumed was entirely different from his own, and John Simpson was completely deceived.

“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I was mistaken.”

“Oh, don’t mention it, sare,” said the assumed Frenchman, politely.

“I have had a good scare,” said John Simpson, wiping the perspiration off his face. “Of course it couldn’t be the man I thought, but there is certainly a strange resemblance.”