"Humph! Why, you are but a boy and dare talk to me."

"Never mind, he knows what he is saying," put in Andy. "We are not to be mistreated by rivals or by any one else."

"Don't talk to me!" snapped Gissem, and unable to keep up the talk with credit to himself, he fled from the store.

"I don't think he will dare to bother us again," said Andy. "He is too much afraid to have his past record raked up."

Andy went off to dinner, leaving Matt in sole charge. The snow had cleared away, but it was still cold, and to keep himself warm, Matt went to the rear of the establishment and got his overcoat. He was just putting on the garment when a noise near the show-window attracted his attention. He ran forward, and saw that a thin stream of water was coming down through the boards of the ceiling. The water was splashing on some of the stock, and unless it was speedily checked it would do a good bit of damage.

Matt knew that the upper part of the building was not occupied. In the rear of the store was a door leading to the back hallway, and through this he ran and started to go upstairs.

As he did so, somebody started to come down. It was the boy who worked for the rival auctioneers.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

TOM INWOLD.

As soon as the boy saw Matt he stopped short, and then endeavored to retreat. But Matt was coming up the steps in a tremendous hurry, and in ten seconds he was close enough to the boy to catch him by the arm.

"Let go of me!" cried the boy, badly frightened.

"What have you done?" questioned Matt sternly, and without waiting for a reply, forced the boy to accompany him into the rooms.

A glance around revealed the cause of the flood below. In one of the rooms was a sink with city water. The water had been turned on full, and the sink-holes stopped up with putty. The sink had overflowed, and the water was running through several cracks in the floor.

As rapidly as he could Matt turned off the faucet. Then leaving the water still in the sink to the brim, he dashed downstairs.

"You come with me and help me save my stock!" he cried to the boy.

"If you don't I'll hand you over to the first policeman I can find."

"Oh, please don't have me arrested!" howled the boy, almost scared out of his wits by the threat. "I--I--didn't mean any harm!"

"You didn't mean any harm? We'll see. Come down now."

The boy hesitated, and then followed Matt into the store. Here a portion of the stock had to be removed, and then the young auctioneer set the boy to work mopping up the water on the counter and the floor.

"Say, please don't have me arrested, will you?" asked the boy, almost in tears over what he considered a very serious predicament.

"You ought to be taught a lesson," returned Matt severely. "What put you up to the idea of letting the water overflow?"

"What Mr. Gissem said. He was awful mad after he was in here, and he told Mr. Fillow he wished that you would burn out or that the water pipes would burst and drown you out. Then he asked me if I couldn't worry you a bit, and I said I'd try, and that's the truth of it."

"Well, that man ought to be cowhided!" was Matt's vigorous exclamation.

"Excuse me, but is he any relation to you?"

"Oh, no."

"Is Mr. Fillow?"

"No, neither of them."

"Then how do you come to be traveling with them?"

The boy's face took on a sober look, and he swallowed something like a lump in his throat.

"I--I got tired of going to school and I ran away from home."

"What do you mean--" Matt stopped short as a certain thought flashed over his mind. "Say, is your name Tom Inwold, and do you come from Plainfield?"

At this unexpected question the boy looked at Matt in amazement, his mouth wide open, and his eyes as big as they could well be.

"Who told you who I was?" he gasped.

"No one; I guessed it."

"But I don't know you."

"That's true. We stopped in Plainfield a number of weeks ago, and there I met your mother."

"And what did she say?" faltered Tom Inwold.

"She told me that you had run away with an auctioneer."

"And--and was that all?" went on the boy, his voice trembling with emotion.

"No; she was very anxious to have you come home again. She missed you very much, and she could not understand how you could have the heart to leave her."

At these words, which Matt delivered very seriously, the tears sprang into Tom Inwold's eyes. Evidently he was not hard-hearted, and had been led astray purely by bad a.s.sociates.

"I--I wish I was back home again," he said in a low voice.

"You do not like being an auctioneer's helper, then?"

"No, I don't. I might like you, but Gissem and Fillow treat me awful."

"In what way?"

"Well, in the first place they don't half feed me, and then they don't pay me the wages they promised."

"What did they promise you?"

"Five dollars a week to start on, and ten dollars when I was worth it.

I've been with them a long time, but I was never able to get a cent out of them."

"Supposing you had the money, would you go home?" asked Matt kindly, for he saw that the boy's better feelings had been touched.