But young Farnum had made up his mind. With a little twist of his body he got to his feet.
Merrill rose, tearful and sullen. “I--I'll fix you for this,” he gulped, and went sobbing toward the schoolhouse.
“Better duck,” James whispered to his cousin.
The little man looked at the boy sharply. The eyes under his shaggy brows were like gimlets.
“Come up to the school with me. I'll see your teacher, son.”
Jeff walked beside him. He knew by the sound of the voice that his rescuer was a Southerner and his heart warmed to him. He wanted greatly to ask a question. Presently it plumped out.
“That you lost your arm?” The boy added quickly, “My father was a soldier under General Early.”
The steel-gray eyes shot at him again. “I was under Early myself.”
“My father was a captain--Captain Farnum,” the young warrior announced proudly.
“Yes, sir. Did you know him?” Jeff trembled with eagerness. His dead soldier-father was the idol of his heart.
“Did I?” He swung Jeff round and looked at him. “You're like him, in a way, and, by Gad! you fight like him. What's your name?”
“Shake hands, Jefferson Davis Farnum, you dashed little rebel. My name is Lucius Chunn. I was a lieutenant in your father's company before I was promoted to one of my own.”
Jeff forgot his troubles instantly. “I wish I'd been alive to go with father to the war,” he cried.
Captain Chunn was delighted. “You doggoned little rebel!”
“I didn't know we used that word in the South' sir.”
Chunn tugged at his goatee and laughed. “We're not in the South, David.”
The former Confederate asked questions to piece out his patchwork information. He knew that Philip Farnum had come out of the war with a constitution weakened by the 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.