In those days all roads led to the harness shop, and there “old Bev” was always to be found when sober, outside the shop on a bench under a tree. There he met all the droughty farmers and entertained them with war stories and tales of his wanderings “out West.” He was always invited to drink with them. His pension kept him in food. His life held no serious problem. I found him on his bench, sober and sorry for it. He passed the time of day with me, and I told him I was going away and had come to say good-by. “Goin’ to the city, huh? Well, don’t let ’em rub it into you. You ain’t a very strong boy.” He was a foxy old man. He leered at me out of his cunning eyes. “Have you got any shootin’ irons?” Long John Silver, the pirate, could not have done any better in the way of complimenting a boy. I was fairly hooked. I assured him that I was well heeled, having two pistols. “That’s good. You’ll git along all right. Now you run along. I’ve got to git me a farmer. I ain’t had my whisky yet.” I hastily dug up enough silver out of my small pocket money for a couple of drinks, and gave it to him. As I went away I thought he looked like an old spider watching his web for a fly. CHAPTER IV In his new position father was forced to travel much, often leaving me to my own devices for weeks and sometimes months. I was put up at a small boarding house kept by a widow, who had two children. She was over-worked, sickly, and cranky. She had half a dozen boarders. Before he left, father gave me the money I had saved up, and told me to look about for a job. There was nobody at the hotel that interested me. The widow was always whining and I kept away from her. Her children were too small for company, and I saw nothing of the other boarders except at mealtimes when they ate much and talked little. The widow gave me a trunkful of books she had taken for a board bill. Among them I found a battered old volume of Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo,” on which I put in many nights. This sharpened my appetite for reading, and I went around secondhand bookstores, and got hold of the D’Artagnan tales and devoured them. Then “Les Misérables,” and on to the master, Dickens. The books so fired me with the desire for travel, adventure, romance, that I was miserable most of the time. As my money dwindled I resolved to find a job. I’d ask the landlady for advice. I found her out in front, scrubbing the steps, red in the face and vicious looking. I told her I was thinking of going to work. “Well, it’s about time you thought of that,” she snapped, “layin’ around here readin’ and eatin’ up your father’s money. You can get a job just like I did when my husband run off and left me with two brats on my hands. I just started out and asked for it at every place I come to till I got it, that’s all. And you can do it, too, if you got the gizzard.”