"Serves you right for not takin' your lawful wife into your confidence," stormed Aunt 'Mira in mingled wrath and tears. "And now what's to become of us I'd like to know? Ev'rything we got taken from us! Kin they really do that, Jase?" The man nodded his head miserably. "Well, all I gotter say is that it's mighty hard on _me_," complained Mrs. Day. "If you was fool enough to trust a scalawag like Tom Hotchkiss----" "It wasn't two weeks ago you was speakin' so well of him," interrupted her husband, stung to the retort discourteous. "You said he was the smartest man in Polktown and if I'd been ha'f the man he was at his age I'd ha' made a fortune." Marty suddenly laughed, high and shrilly. "Surely! surely!" he exploded. "You could easy make a fortune the same way Tom Hotchkiss done--by stealin' it from others." "Well----" began his mother, when to Janice's, as well as his parents', vast surprise, her cousin suddenly dominated the occasion. "You keep still, Ma! You've said enough. Dad didn't go for to do it, did he? He wasn't aimin' to lose his money and make us poor, was he? D'you think he did it a-purpose?" "Well--no, Marty," admitted Mrs. Day, "I don't think he did. But----" "Nuff said, then," declared the youngest of the Day clan briskly. "What's done's done. No use bawlin' over spilt sody-water," and he grinned more or less cheerfully. "What good did the money dad had in the bank ever do us? Not a bit! It might as well have been burnt up. We can hire this house to live in just as well's though we owned it, can't we? And not have to worry about taxes and repairs neither." "Why, Marty!" murmured Janice, amazed by this outburst, yet somewhat impressed by the sounding sense of it. "Hi tunket!" exploded her cousin, expanding as he looked around on his surprised relatives. "What does it matter, anyway? Ain't I here, Ma? Have you forgot I'm alive, Dad? Can't I go to work and earn money enough to support this family if I haf to? I--guess--yes! Why!" pursued the excited Marty, "I can go to work next week at Jobbin's sawmill an' earn my dollar-seventy-five a day. Sure I can! Or I bet I could get a job in some store. Or on the _Constance Colfax_--they pay deckhands a dollar-fifty. And there's the railroad goin' to open up. "Pshaw! there's nothin' to it," declared the boy. "What if dad has got the rheumatism? _I_ can work an' we won't starve." "Marty!" cried Janice, running around the table and putting both arms about his neck. "You dear boy--_you're a man_!" "Huh!" grunted Marty half strangled. "Who said I wasn't?" "He's a good, dear child," sobbed his mother. "D'you hear him, Jase Day?" "Yes," said Mr. Day brokenly. "I dunno but it's wuth while losin' ev'rything ye own to l'arn that ye got a boy like him." Marty was suddenly smitten with a great wave of confusion. His enthusiasm had carried him out of himself. "Aw, well," he mumbled, "I was just tellin' you. You needn't worry. I can get a job."