The Steel Horse. Charles Austin Fosdick
him in spite of everybody. Besides, the boy is pretty near old enough to choose his own guardian."
"Don't say that," whispered the other, hastily. "Whatever you do, don't say that where he can hear it. That's a point of law that he doesn't know anything about, and his uncle wouldn't like to have him posted."
"Pooh! I shan't say anything. If I am employed to catch him as often as he runs away, so much the better for my pocket-book. I am too old to quarrel with my bread and butter."
When the entertainment was ended Joe Wayring and his chums left with the others, and close behind them in the aisle came the man in gray and his companion. In the hall they encountered two dense living streams that came pouring down from the galleries, and in the crush that followed the boys became separated. Joe and Arthur found each other again on the sidewalk, but nothing was to be seen of Roy. As Arthur locked arms with his friend to prevent a second separation, they noticed a little knot of curious people gathered by the curbstone, and saw a close carriage driven rapidly away.
"Move on!" exclaimed a burly policeman. "It's nothing at all except a fellow resisting arrest. Move on, please."
The two boys would have been glad to wait for Roy; but as the guardian of the night emphasized his order by resting his club lightly against Joe's back, they concluded that they had better move on. They walked the length of the block and then returned, but no Roy Sheldon was in sight. There were but few people coming out of the hall now, but there was the watchful policeman with his ready club and his stereotyped command:
"Move on, please. Don't block up the walk."
"Roy has certainly come out before this time, and that blue-coat has driven him away," said Joe. "He knows the road to the hotel, and there's where we shall find him."
The boys turned about and went down the street again, and the first thing that attracted their attention when they entered their hotel was the familiar uniform which they had adopted for their own—dark blue tights, white flannel shirt with blue trimmings, and white helmet. The boy who wore it was standing with his back to them, examining the register.
"I never noticed before that Roy was so fine a figure," whispered Arthur. "Look at the muscles on his legs. He fills out those tights as though he had been melted and poured into them."
Without saying or doing anything to attract the boy's notice, the two friends slipped up behind him, and Arthur threw his arms over his shoulders.
"Now, you runaway, give an account of yourself!" he exclaimed.
The effect produced by these innocent words was surprising in the extreme. In less than a second the supposed Roy Sheldon proved that he was quite as muscular as he looked to be. Uttering a cry of surprise and alarm he doubled himself up like a jack-knife and lunged forward with all his strength, and then almost as quickly jerked himself backward. By the first movement he came within a hair's breadth of throwing Arthur Hastings heavily on his head; and by the second he slipped out of his grasp like an eel. Then he straightened up and faced him with clenched hands and flashing eyes.
"Don't touch me!" he began, fiercely. "If you or any of your hirelings lay an ugly finger on me again—"
When he had said this much he stopped and looked hard at Arthur and then at Joe, while an expression of great astonishment settled on his face. My master and his friend were equally amazed. That was Roy Sheldon's uniform, if they ever saw it, but it wasn't Roy who was in it, although he looked almost exactly like him. There were the same clear-cut features, hazel eyes and wavy brown hair, and the same faint suspicion of a mustache; but they did not belong to Roy Sheldon. A second look showed them that.
"Who are you?" demanded the young fellow, at length.
"I think that is a proper question for us to ask you," replied Arthur, who, having never before been handled so easily by any boy of his size, felt disposed to resent it. "What are you doing in our uniform, we'd be pleased to have you tell us."
"Your uniform!" exclaimed the stranger eagerly. "Are you from Jamestown?"
"No. Never heard of such a place about here. Don't even know where it is. We are from Mount Airy."
"Then we are even," said the stranger, in a disappointed tone, "for I don't know where Mount Airy is."
"Then of course you live a good way from here."
"Not so very far; not more than twenty miles, but it might as well be a thousand for all I know about this city. But you are wheelmen, of course. Well, now I wish—but say," added the speaker, as if something had just occurred to him. "Why did you grab me and call me a runaway?"
"Because we thought you were. I mean we took you for a runaway from our party," said Joe; and then he wondered why it was that the stranger exhibited so much anxiety and even alarm at the words. "There is another fellow in our party, but we have lost him in some unaccountable manner."
"Does he look anything like me?"
"He does, indeed; so very much like you that when we saw you with our uniform on we took you for our missing friend. You are a little stouter than he is. That's all the difference there is in your figures; but to look at your faces a little distance away, any one not well acquainted with you would take you for twin brothers. How did you happen to choose that uniform? What club do you belong to?"
"I don't belong to any club. How does it come that you happened to choose it when there were so many more that you might have taken?"
"We made it up all out of our own heads," replied Arthur.
"I can't say that I did. I copied it. The Jamestown boys wear it, and I have seen a good many bicyclists running along the road past our island dressed in the same way."
"Your island!" repeated Joe.
"Yes; my island prison, for that is just what it is to me. Let's go into the reading-room," said the stranger, seeing that the hotel clerk was becoming interested in their conversation. "I don't care to have everybody hear what I say."
He moved away from the desk as he said this, and Joe and Arthur followed, lost in wonder. If there wasn't a mystery in this young fellow's life he was out of his head. That was plain to both of them.
"My real name is Rowe Shelly," began the stranger, taking possessing of a chair at one of the tables and drawing two others alongside of him, "but when I registered I signed myself Robert Barton, and gave Baltimore as my home."
"What made you do that? What have you been up to?" inquired Joe, while Arthur began to wonder if they had fallen in with another sharper who would presently make an effort to cheat them out of some money.
"I haven't done anything that either of you would not do if you were in my place," answered young Shelly, if that was really his name. "To make a long story short, money is at the bottom of all my trouble. My grandfather, when he died, willed the most of his large property to my father, who was his only child, on condition that he quit the sea and settled down on shore with his family, mother and me. There was a step-son, who had assumed the family name in the hope of getting some of the money, but he was left without a dollar. Our home at that time was near some southern seaport whose name I do not remember, for I was too young to know anything. This step-son, who had been dubbed "colonel" on account of his supposed wealth, happened to be at home when grandfather died, and what did he do but get possession of the will, spread the report that father had been lost at sea, take out letters of administration, turn mother out of the house, and have himself appointed my guardian. I don't pretend to know what trickery he resorted to, to bring all this about, but I know he did it."
"Humph! I wouldn't live with such a villain," exclaimed Joe, who was deeply interested. He believed this strange story, and so did Arthur, who told himself that he must have been about half crazy when he suspected a boy who bore so close a resemblance to Roy Sheldon of being a sharper.
"I don't live with him any more," replied Rowe. "I have left him for good; but of course I did not take the trouble to ask his consent."
"Oh, that's what made you jump and look frightened when I caught hold of you and