FullReads

One day, Rover and a large dog belonging to Skivers got into a fight about something. Dick’s interest in his dog brought him at once to the scene of action. His master, seeing this, ordered him, in a harsh, angry tone, to clear out and mind his own business. As he did so, he took a large club, and commenced beating Rover in a most cruel manner. Dick could not stand this. His blood was up to fever heat in an instant. Seizing a long, heavy pole, used for turning and adjusting hides in the vats, he sprang towards Skivers, and giving it a rapid sweep, brought it with tremendous force against his head, knocking him into a vat half-full of a strong infusion of astringent bark, to the bottom of which he instantly sank.

So incensed did the lad feel, that he made not the slightest attempt to extricate his master from a situation in which death must have inevitably ensued in a few minutes, but walked away to another part of the yard. Two or three journeymen, however, who witnessed the whole affair, were on the spot in a moment, and took out the body of Skivers. He was completely insensible. There was the bloody mark of a large wound on his head. A physician was immediately called, who bled him profusely. This brought him back to consciousness. In a day or two he was out again, and apparently as well as ever. In the mean time, both Dick and his inseparable companion, Rover, had disappeared, and gone no one knew whither. No effort was made to discover the place to which the boy had fled, as every one was too much rejoiced that he had left the village, to care about getting him back. About twelve months after, his mother died–her gray hairs brought down to the grave in sorrow. Year after year then passed away, and the memory of the lad was gradually effaced from the minds of all, or retained only among the dim recollections of the past.

Mr. Acres, who had first placed temptation in the way of Dick Lawson, continued to prosper in all external things, and to hold his position of influence and respectability in the neighbourhood. He, perhaps, more than others, thought about the lad in whom he had once felt a good deal of pride and interest, as exhibiting a fair promise for the future. But he never felt exactly easy in mind when he did think of him. Something whispered that, perhaps, he had been to blame in encouraging his wild habits. But, then, how could he have dreamed, he would argue, that the boy had in him so strong a tendency to evil as the result had proved. He had once been just as fond as Dick had shown himself to be of bird’s-nesting, dog-fighting, etc., but then, as soon as he had sown a few wild oats, he sobered down into a steady and thrifty farmer of regular habits. And he of course expected to see Dick Lawson do the same.

“And who knows but that he has?” he would sometimes say, in an effort at self-consolation.

It was some five or six years from the time Dick left the village, that Mr. Acres was awakened one night from sleep by a dream that some one had opened the door of the chamber where he slept. So distinct was the impression on his mind that some one had entered, that he lay perfectly still, with his eyes peering into the darkness around, in order to detect the presence of any one, should the impression on his mind really be true. He had lain thus, with every sense acutely active, for only a moment or two, when a sound, as of a stealthy footstep, came distinctly upon his ear, and at the same moment, a dark body seemed to move before his eyes, as if crossing the room towards that part of it where stood a large secretary, in which was usually contained considerable sums of money.