that?” he raged. “Don’t tell me – it’s a piece of spite work! Who did that, I say?”
CHAPTER III
BREAKING AWAY
Dave Dashaway was almost speechless. His tyrant master had struck him in a tender spot, indeed. Not that Dave had ever been foolish enough to build extravagant hopes on his model. It had been all guess work and an experiment. However, his soul had been wrapped up in his labor, he had been proud and pleased with his progress as an inventor, and that mean, vengeful act of the old man roused him up terribly.
“What busted that wagon?” demanded Mr. Warner, grasping Dave’s arm till the pain was unbearable.
Dave jerked loose, and panting and angry-faced confronted his guardian with a look that made the old man hesitate. His lip trembled, but he held his speech as steady as he could, as he replied:
“Dobbin got scared and ran into the ditch.”
“With your star-gazing after those airships I’ll warrant.”
This was so near the truth that Dave did not reply.
“What do you suppose will pay for all that damage to that wagon?” demanded Warner.
“I suppose my hard work will,” bluntly replied Dave.
“Your hard work – bah! It looks as if you was worked hard, fritting half of the afternoon away, spending hours and hours on that worthless piece of trumpery up in the barn loft. I’ve settled for good and all. Now you put up that horse, get your supper, and go to your room. You dare to leave it till I say so, and I’ll just call the sheriff up here again, and see what he says about affairs.”
This was an old-time threat of his guardian. It was worn so threadbare that Dave did not pay much attention to it. He proceeded silently about his task, unhitched Dobbin, led him to his stall, and made him comfortable for the night with feed and bedding.
As Dave came out into the yard again he made a speedy run for the wagon. His guardian had been poking about the vehicle, and had discovered the sweater roll. This he now held, turning it over and over in his hand and viewing it curiously.
“Here!” shouted Dave, “that’s mine.”
“Oh, is it?” snapped the old man, holding the bundle out of Dave’s reach. “What is it? I’m going to see.”
“I don’t mean that it belongs to me,” Dave corrected himself, “but I found it.”
“What is it?”
“It fell out of an airship. It lighted on Dobbin’s back. That’s what made him run away.”
“Fell from an airship?” repeated old Warner with a sniff of disbelief. “Romancing, hey?”
“No, I am not, I am telling you the truth,” persisted Dave.
“Hello! hello! Here, what’s this?”
Mr. Warner had opened the sweater. His miserly old eyes fairly gloated over the pocket book and its contents. His thin cruel lips moved as if he was smacking them over a meal.
“You found this, you say?” he inquired.
“Yes, I did,” responded Dave brusquely, none too well pleased with the way things had turned out.
“Well, finders keepers!” chuckled the old man with a cunning laugh.
“Nobody is going to have that pocket book but the owner,” said Dave staunchly.
“I’ll arrange about that, you young insolent!” retorted Mr. Warner.
“You’ll have to, in the right way, too,” asserted Dave, who was quite nettled.
“Eh – what’s that?” shouted the old man.
“Just what I said. If you will look at that medal in that pocket book, you will find that the owner’s name is on it. It is ‘Robert King’. All you’ve got to do is to send his property back to him. I happen to know that he is at Fairfield now, and a letter directed there would reach him.”
“Say,” blurted out old Warner, “I know what to do, I guess, about my own business.”
“This is my business, too,” insisted Dave. “I found that property, and I’m honest enough to want to get it right back to the man who lost it.”
“You get into that house quick as you can, and mind your own business and keep your mouth shut, or I’ll make it pretty interesting for you,” bawled the old man.
Dave closed his lips tightly. He had gone through a pretty trying ordeal. It had made him almost desperate. It had come so thick and fast, one indignity after another, that Dave had not found time to break down. His just wrath over the destruction of the model was lessened by the appropriation of the sweater bundle.
“There’s something I won’t stand,” declared Dave, as he made his way into the house. “I know who that property belongs to, and if Mr. Warner tries any tricks, I’ll expose him.”
Dave felt sure that his tyrant master would not do the square thing. He might not dare to keep the pocket book and its contents and say nothing about it. Dave felt sure, however, that in any event Mr. Warner would not give it up without a big reward. This humiliated Dave, somehow, on account of his father and his own liking for aeronautics. Dave felt more than kindly to one of that profession, and would have been glad to return the lost pocket book for nothing.
Dave glanced into the kitchen as he passed its open door. The scraps of food on the uncovered deal table did not at all appeal to his appetite. Besides that, he was too stirred up to care to eat. He went up to his little room in the attic and sat down at the open window to think.
Dave felt that a crisis in his affairs had been reached. His mind ran back rapidly over his past life. He could find nothing cheering in it since the time he was removed from a pleasant boarding school upon the death of his father. The latter had been traveling in foreign parts at the time giving lectures on aeronautics, of which science he was an ardent student.
Since then old Silas Warner had led his young ward a very wretched life. Several letters had come addressed to Mr. Dashaway. These Mr. Warner had not shown to Dave, but had told him that they amounted to nothing of importance. Dave had noticed that these, with some other papers, his guardian kept in a strong manilla envelope in his desk.
Dave had known nothing but neglect and hardship with Silas Warner in the past. He saw no prospects now of any betterment of his condition. After what had happened during the day the man would be more unbearable than ever.
“I’ve got to do it,” murmured Dave, after a long period of painful thought. “My life will be spoiled if I stay here. I’ll never learn anything, I’ll never amount to anything. There is only one way out.”
Dave got up and paced the floor of the darkened room in greatly disturbed spirit.
“I’ll do it,” he added a moment later, with firmness and decision. “I’ll be true to my name – it’s a ‘dash away’ for freedom. Yes, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to run away from home – if this can be called home.”
Old Warner had told Dave to go to his room and remain there until
