And what did the general say to Don? Not a word. The latter limped
about the house for nearly a week before he was able to sit in the
saddle again, and his father wisely concluded that if his night’s
experience in the cellar had not cured him of his love of practical
joking, nothing that he could say would help the matter any. Of course,
both the boys were eager to learn the truth concerning the buried
treasure, and as soon as Marshall went away, they spoke to their
parents about it. Then it came out that either old Jordan had wilfully
misrepresented things, which was probable, or else that Godfrey’s
lively imagination and his great desire to be rich without labor, had
led him to magnify the contents of the barrel, which was still more
probable. The old negro had certainly buried a barrel on the morning
the levee was cut, and it contained silver-ware that, in good times,
could have been bought for a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. The
barrel was dug up by another negro as soon as the soldiers were gone,
and the most of the silver-ware was in use now, and had been ever since
the war. The general thought this a good place to say something the
boys would remember. People do sometimes get rich without labor, he
said, but their wealth does not, as a rule, last long. To learn the
value of money, one must work for it. There is but one sure way to
become prosperous, and that is to be industrious, saving and honest.
Had Godfrey remembered this, he might have been living at home, a happy
and contented man, instead of hiding in the swamp for fear of arrest.
The general never thought of having him arrested, and would not have
said a word to him if he had met him in the road; but Godfrey knew
something that the general didn’t know: he had been guilty of highway
robbery, and he thought it best to keep out of sight. Of course, he
went on from bad to worse--one always does, unless he grows better
every day--and the people in the neighborhood often heard of him
after that. Perhaps we also shall hear of him, and of some of our
other characters, in the second volume of this series, which will be
entitled, THE BOY TRAPPER.
THE END.
FAMOUS STANDARD
JUVENILE LIBRARIES.
ANY VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY AT $1.00 PER VOLUME
(Except the Sportsman’s Club Series, Frank Nelson Series and
Jack Hazard Series.).
Each Volume Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.
* * * * *
HORATIO ALGER, JR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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