“That’s right,” cried Roger, with satisfaction, resuming his seat. “Tell me the whole business. Fire away, old man.”

As Ben seemed hesitating over the beginning of the story, Roger observed that, with an apparently unconscious movement, he once more lifted his hand to his mutilated ear. At that moment Eliot was struck with the conviction that the story he was about to hear was concerned with the injury to that ear.

“At the very start,” said Ben, an uncomfortable look on his plain face, “I have to confess that my father was always what is called a shiftless man. He was more of a dreamer than a doer, and, instead of trying to accomplish things, he spent far too much time in meditating on what he might accomplish. He dreamed a great deal of inventing something that would make his fortune, and this led him to declare frequently that some day he would make a lot of money. He was not a bad man, but he was careless and neglectful, a poor planner and a poor provider. The neighbors called him lazy and held him in considerable contempt.

“Although we were very poor, my father was determined that I should have an education, and I attended the public school in Hilton, where we lived. I know I’m not handsome, Eliot, and could never be much of a favorite; but the fact that we lived in such humble circumstances and that my father seemed so worthless caused the boys who dared do so to treat me with disdain. Naturally I have a violent temper, and when it gets the best of me I am always half crazy with rage. I always was pretty strong, and I made it hot for most of the boys who dared taunt me about my father or call me names. It seems to me now that I was almost always fighting in those times. I hated the other boys and despised them in a way as much as they despised me.

“My only boy friend and confidant was my little blind brother, Jerry, whose sight was almost totally destroyed by falling from a window when he was only four years old. Although I always wished for a boy chum near my own age, I never had one; and I think perhaps this made me all the more devoted to Jerry, who, I am sure, loved me as much as I did him.

“Jerry’s one great pleasure was in fiddling. Father had a violin, and without any instructions at all Jerry learned to play on it. It was wonderful how quickly he could pick up a tune. I used to tell him he would surely become a great violinist some day.

“Of course my temper and frequent resentment over the behavior of other boys toward me got me into lots of trouble at school. Once I was suspended, and a dozen times I was threatened with expulsion. But I kept right on, and after a while it got so that even the older and bigger boys didn’t care much about stirring me up. If they didn’t respect me, some of them were afraid of me.

“There was a certain old woman in the village who disliked me, and she was always saying I would kill somebody some day and be hanged for it. Don’t think I’m boasting of this, Eliot, for I’m not; I am heartily ashamed of it. I tell it so you may understand what led me into the affair with Bernard Hayden and made him and his father my bitter enemies.

“I suppose it was because I was strong and such a fighter that the boys gave me a chance on the school football team. Hayden opposed it, but I got on just the same. He always was a proud fellow, and I think he considered it a disgrace to play on the team with me. But I was determined to show the boys I could play, and I succeeded fairly well. This changed the bearing of some of them toward me, and I was beginning to get along pretty well at school when something happened that drove me, through no fault of my own, in shame and disgrace from the school and cast a terrible shadow on my life.”

Here Stone paused, shading his eyes with his square, strong hand, and seemed to shrink from the task of continuing. Roger opened his lips to speak a word of encouragement, but suddenly decided that silence was best and waited for the other lad to resume.

“For some time,” Ben finally went on, “my father had been working much in secret in a garret room of our house. Whenever anything was said to him about this he always declared he was working out an invention that would enable him to make lots of money. I remember that, for all of our great poverty, he was in the best of spirits those days and often declared we’d soon be rich.

“There was in the village one man, Nathan Driggs, with whom father had always been on intimate terms. Driggs kept a little shop where he did watch and clock repairing, and he was noted for his skill as an engraver. Driggs was also rather poor, and it was often remarked that a man of his ability should be better situated and more successful.

“One dark night, near one o’clock in the morning, I was aroused by hearing someone knocking at our door. My father went to the door, and, with my wonder and curiosity aroused, I listened at an upper window that was open. The man at the door talked with my father in low tones, and I fancied he was both excited and alarmed.

“I could not hear much that passed between them, but I believed I recognized the voice of Driggs, and I was sure I heard him say something about ‘friendship’ and ’hiding it somewhere.’ When the man had gone I heard father climb the stairs to the attic. I wondered over it a long time before I fell asleep again.

“The following day my father was arrested and the house was searched. Concealed in the attic they discovered a bundle, or package, and this contained dies for the making of counterfeit money. In vain father protested his innocence. Appearances were against him, and every one seemed to believe him guilty. On learning what the bundle contained, he immediately told how it came into his possession, stating it had been brought to him in the night by Nathan Driggs.

“Driggs was likewise arrested, but he contradicted my father’s statement and positively denied all knowledge of the bundle or its contents. Several members of an organized body of counterfeiters had been captured, but these men did not manufacture their dies, and the Secret Service agents had traced the latter to Fairfield.

“Both father and Driggs were held for trial in heavy bonds. Neither of them was able to find bondsmen, and so they went to jail. There were those in Hilton who fancied Driggs might be innocent, but everybody seemed to believe my father guilty. It was the talk of the town how he had shut himself in his garret day after day in a most suspicious manner and had often boasted that some day he would ’make a lot of money.’

“At the regular trial I was a witness. I told how Driggs had come to our house in the night, and I repeated the few words I had heard him say. The prosecutor did his best to confuse me, and when he failed he sarcastically complimented me on having learned my lesson well. You can’t understand how I felt when I saw no one believed me.

“Again Driggs denied everything, and he had covered his tracks so well that it was impossible to find him guilty; but my father was convicted and sentenced to a long term in prison. It was a heavy blow to my poor mother, and she never recovered from it.

“I now found myself an outcast in every sense of the word, despised and shunned by all the boys who knew me. Under such conditions I could not attend school, and I tried to do what I could to help my mother support the family; but no one seemed willing to give me work, and we had a pretty hard time of it.

“The worst was to come. Two months after being sent to prison my father attempted to escape and was shot and killed. Mother was prostrated, and I thought she would surely die then; but she finally rallied, although she carried a constant pain in her heart, as if the bullet that slew my father had lodged in her breast.”

Once more the narrator paused, swallowing down a lump that had risen into his throat. He was a strong lad and one not given to betraying emotion, but the remembrance of what his unfortunate mother had suffered choked him temporarily. When he again took up his story he spoke more hurriedly, as if anxious to finish and have it over.

“It isn’t necessary to tell all the unpleasant things that happened after that, but we had a hard time of it, Eliot, and you can understand why it was that I just almost hated nearly everybody. But most I came to hate Bern Hayden, who was a leader among the village boys, and who never lost a chance to taunt and deride me and call me the son of a jail-bird. I don’t know how I kept my hands off him as long as I did. I often thought I could kill him with a will.

“My little brother could get around amazingly well, even though he was blind, and he had a way of carrying father’s old fiddle with him into a grove not far from our house. One day I came home and found him crying himself sick over the fiddle, which had been smashed and ruined. He told me Bern Hayden had smashed the instrument.

“That night Hayden visited another boy, with whom he was very chummy. This other boy lived some distance outside the village, and I lay in wait for Hayden and stopped him as he was crossing lots on his way home. It was just getting dark, and the spot was lonely. It was light enough, just the same, for him to see my face, and I knew from his actions that he was frightened. I told him I was going to give him such a thumping that he’d remember it as long as he lived. He threatened me, but that didn’t stop me a bit, and I went for him.

“Hayden wasn’t such a slouch of a fighter, but he couldn’t hold his own with me, for I was bursting with rage. I got him down and was punishing him pretty bad when somehow he managed to get out his pocket knife and open it. He struck at me with the knife, and this is the result.”

Roger gave a cry as Ben again lifted a hand to his mutilated ear.

“He cut part of your ear off?” gasped Eliot.

Ben nodded. “Then I seemed to lose my reason entirely. I choked him until he was pretty nearly finished. As he lay limp and half dead on the ground, I stripped off his coat and vest and literally tore his shirt from his body. I placed him in a sitting posture on the ground, with his arms locked about the butt of a small tree, and tied his wrists together. With his own knife with which he had marked me for life, I cut a tough switch from a bush, and with that I gave it to him on his bare back until his screams brought two men, who seized and stopped me. I was so furious that I had not heard their approach. I was all covered with blood from my ear, and I sort of gave out all at once when the men grabbed me.

“I tell you, that affair kicked up some excitement in Hilton. My ear was cared for, but even while he dressed the wound the doctor told me that Lemuel Hayden would surely send me to the reform school. My mother fainted when she heard what had happened.

“I believe they would have sent me to the reform school right away had I not been taken violently ill the following day. Jerry told me that Bern Hayden was also in bed. I was just getting up when mother fell ill herself, and in three days she died. I think she died of a broken heart. Poor mother! Her whole life was one of hardships and disappointments.

“Uncle Asher, mother’s brother, arrived the day after mother died. He took charge of the funeral, but almost as soon as he stepped off the train in Hilton he heard what a bad boy I was, and he looked on me with disfavor.

“After the funeral Jerry came to me in the greatest excitement and told me he had heard Lemuel Hayden and Uncle Asher talking, and uncle had agreed that I should be sent to the Reformatory, as Mr. Hayden wished. Uncle said he would look out for Jerry, but I was to be carried off the next morning.

“That night I ran away. I whispered good-by to Jerry and stole out of the house, with only a little bundle of clothing and less than a dollar in money. I managed to get away all right, for I don’t believe any one tried very hard to catch me. I fancy the people of Hilton thought it a good riddance.

“For a long time I was afraid of being taken. I found work in several places, but kept changing and moving until Jacob Baldwin took me to work for him. Both Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin have been awfully good to me, and sometime, if I ever can, I’m going to pay them back for it. They encouraged me to save money to come here to school. I came and found the Haydens here, and now that’s all over.

“I’ve told you the whole yarn, Eliot; I haven’t tried to hide anything or excuse myself. I know I was to blame, but you might have done something yourself if you had been goaded and tormented and derided as I was. Then to have Hayden do such a mean thing as to smash my brother’s fiddle!

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told the whole story to, and I suppose, now that you know just the sort of fellow I am, you’ll agree with Hayden that I’m no fit associate for other boys at the academy.”