Chester Rand; or, The New Path to Fortune, Jr. Horatio Alger [good books for high schoolers .txt] 📗

kissed the boy’s cheek. Ernest’s face lighted up with a loving smile, and again he kissed Chester’s hand.

“Now, Chester, you can come to my den.” Arthur opened the door of a large room, furnished with every comfort.

It was easy to see that it was a boy’s apartment. On a table were boxing gloves. Over a desk in a corner was hung the photograph of a football team, of which Arthur was the captain. There was another photograph representing him with gloves on, about to have a set-to with a boy friend.

“Do you box, Chester?” he asked.

“No; I never saw a pair of boxing gloves before.”

“I will give you a lesson. Here, put on this pair.”

Chester smiled.

“I shall be at your mercy,” he said. “I am, perhaps, as strong as you, but I have no science.”

“It won’t take you long to learn.”

So the two boys faced each other. Before he knew what was going to happen, Chester received a light tap on the nose from his new friend.

“I must tell you how to guard yourself. I will be the professor and you the pupil.”

Chester soon became interested, and at the end of half an hour his teacher declared that he had improved wonderfully.

“We will have a lesson every time you come to see uncle,” he said.

“Then I shall come to see two professors.”

“Yes, an old one and young one. Between uncle, Ernest and myself, you will find your time pretty well occupied when you come here.”

“I think it a great privilege to come here,” said Chester, gratefully.

“And I am glad to have you. I shall have some one to box with, at any rate. Now,” he added, with a comical look, “I can’t induce my uncle to have a bout with me. Indeed, I should be afraid to, for he is so shortsighted he would need to wear spectacles, and I would inevitably break them.”

Chester could not forbear laughing at the idea of the learned professor having a boxing match with his lively, young nephew.

“If you will make me as good a boxer as yourself, I shall feel very much indebted.”

“That will come in time. I am quite flattered at the opportunity of posing as a teacher. Have you a taste for jewelry? Just look in this drawer.”

Arthur opened one of the small drawers in his bureau, and displayed a varied collection of studs, sleeve buttons, collar buttons, scarf pins, etc.

“You might set up a jeweler’s store,” suggested Chester. “Where did you get them all?”

“I had an uncle who was in the business, and he and other relatives have given me plenty.”

“I haven’t even a watch.”

“No, really? Why, how can you get along without one?”

“I have to.”

“Wait a minute.”

Arthur opened another drawer, revealing two silver watches, one an open face, the other a hunting watch.

“Take your choice,” he said.

“Do you really mean it?”

“Certainly.”

“But would your uncle approve of your giving me such a valuable present?”

“My uncle doesn’t bother himself about such trifles. I don’t use either of these watches. I have a gold one, given me last Christmas.”

“Since you are so kind, I think I prefer the hunting watch.”

“All right! There it is. Let me set it for you. The chain goes with it, of course.”

Chester felt delighted with his present. He had hoped sometime—when he was eighteen, perhaps—to own a watch, but had no expectation of getting one so soon.

“You are a generous friend, Arthur,” he said.

“Don’t make too much of such a trifle, Chester!” returned the other, lightly.

When Chester said he must go home, Arthur put on his hat and proposed to walk with him part of the way, an offer which Chester gratefully accepted.

They walked over to Broadway, chatting as they went.

All at once, Chester, who had not expected to see anyone he knew, touched Arthur on the arm.

“Do you see that man in front of us?” he asked, pointing to a figure about six feet ahead.

“Yes. What of him?”

“It is our bookkeeper, David Mullins.”

“Is it, indeed? Do you know whom he is walking with?”

Chester glanced at a rather flashily dressed individual who was walking arm in arm with the bookkeeper.

“No,” he answered.

“It is Dick Ralston,” answered Arthur, “one of the most notorious gamblers in the city.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

DICK RALSTON.

Chester was new to the city and a novice in worldly affairs, but the discovery that the bookkeeper was on intimate terms with a gambler astounded him. He felt that Mr. Fairchild ought to know it, but he shrank from telling him.

Of course, the presumption was that Mullins was also a gambler, but this was not certain. Chester decided to say nothing, but to be watchful. David Mullins had been five years in his present place, and his services must have been satisfactory or he would not have been retained.

There was one thing, however, that Chester did not know. This gambler—Dick Ralston, as he was familiarly called—was only a recent acquaintance. Mullins had known him but three months, but had already, through his influence, been smitten by the desire to become rich more quickly than he could in any legitimate way.

He had accompanied Dick to the gaming table, and tried his luck, losing more than he could comfortably spare. He was in debt to his dangerous friend one hundred and fifty dollars, and on the evening in question Dick had intimated that he was in need of the money.

“But how can I give it to you?” asked Mullins, in a tone of annoyance.

“You receive a good salary.”

“One hundred dollars a month, yes. But I can’t spare more than thirty dollars a month toward paying the debt.”

“Which would take you five months. That won’t suit me. Haven’t you got any money saved up?”

“No; I ought to have, but I have enjoyed myself as I went along, and it has taken all I earned.”

“Humph! Very pleasant for me!”

“And for me, too. It isn’t very satisfactory to pinch and scrape for five months just to get out of debt. If it was for articles I had had—in other words, for value received—it would be different. But it is just for money lost at the gaming table—a gambling debt.”

“Such debts, among men of honor,” said Dick, loftily, “are the most binding. Everywhere they are debts of honor.”

“I don’t see why,” grumbled Mullins.

“Come,” said Ralston, soothingly, “you are out of sorts, and can’t see things in their right light. I’ll lend you fifty dollars more, making the debt two hundred dollars.”

“I don’t see how that will help me.”

“I’ll tell you. You must win the money to pay your debt at the gaming table. Why, two hundred dollars is a trifle. You might win it in one evening.”

“Or lose as much more.”

“There’s no such word as fail! Shall I tell you what I did once?”

“Yes,” answered Mullins, in some curiosity.

“I was in Nashville—dead broke! I was younger then, and losses affected me more. I was even half inclined—you will laugh, I know—to blow my brains out or to throw myself into the river, when a stranger offered to lend me ten dollars to try my luck again. Well, I thought as you did, that it was of little use. I would lose it, and so make matters worse.

“But desperation led me to accept. It was one chance, not a very good one, but still a chance. From motives of prudence I only risked five dollars at first. I lost. Savagely I threw down the remaining five and won twenty-five. Then I got excited, and kept on for an hour. At the end of that time, how do you think I stood?”

“How?” asked Mullins, eagerly.

“I had won eight hundred and sixty-five dollars,” answered Dick Ralston, coolly. “I paid back the ten dollars, and went out of the gambling house a rich man, comparatively speaking.”

Now, all this story was a clever fiction, but David Mullins did not know this. He accepted it as plain matter of fact, and his heart beat quickly as he fancied himself winning as large a sum.

“But such cases must be rare,” he ventured.

“Not at all. I could tell you more wonderful stories about friends of mine, though it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Now, will you take the fifty dollars I offered you?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to play again to-night. I feel nervous.”

“Very good. Meet me to-morrow evening at the gambling house, and the money shall be ready for you.”

Then they parted, and the bookkeeper, who had a headache, went home and to bed. He had that evening lost fifty dollars to Dick Ralston, and so increased his debt from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars.

But his heart was filled with feverish excitement. The story told by Ralston had its effect upon him, and he decided to keep on in the dangerous path upon which he had entered. Why pinch himself for five months to pay his debt, when a single evening’s luck would clear him from every obligation? If Dick Ralston and others could be lucky, why not he? This was the way Mullins reasoned. He never stopped to consider what would be the result if things did not turn out as he hoped—if he lost instead of won.

Some weeks passed. The bookkeeper met with varying success at the gaming table. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but on the whole his debt to Dick Ralston didn’t increase. There were reasons why the gambler decided to go slow. He was playing with Mullins as a cat plays with a mouse.

But our chief concern is with Chester Rand. He found a comfortable room on Twelfth Street, not far from the office, which, with board, only cost him five dollars per week. This, to be sure, took all his salary, but he was earning something outside.

On account of so much time being taken up by his work for the professor, he did little for the comic weeklies. But occasionally, through his friend, the artist, a five or ten-dollar bill came into his hands. He bought himself a new suit, and some other articles which he found he needed, and wrote home to ask his mother if she wished any assistance.

“Thank you for your offer,” she replied, “but the money Miss Dolby pays me defrays all my housekeeping expenses and a little more. She is certainly peculiar, but is good-natured, and never finds fault. She is a good deal of company for me. Of course, I miss you very much, but it cheers me to think you are doing well, and are happy, with good prospects for the future. There is nothing for you in Wyncombe, as I very well know; that is, nothing you would be willing to accept.

“That reminds me to say that Mr. Tripp is having a hard time with boys. He discharged Abel Wood soon after you went to New York. He has tried two boys since, but doesn’t seem to get suited. When I was in the store yesterday, he inquired after you. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that if he gets tired of New York, he can come back to the store, and I will pay him three dollars a week!’” He said this with an air of a man who is making a magnificent offer. I told him you were satisfied with your position in the city. I must tell you of one mean thing he has done.

“He has been trying to induce Miss Dolby to leave me and take board with him, offering to take her for two dollars a week less. She told me of this herself. ‘I wouldn’t go there if he’d take me for nothing,’ she said, and I believe she meant it. She is not mean, and is willing to pay a fair, even a liberal, price, where she is suited. You see, therefore, that neither you nor I need borrow any trouble on this point!”

This letter relieved Chester of all anxiety. All things seemed bright to him. What he did for the comic weeklies, added to his work for Prof. Hazlitt, brought him