LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      The morning Alan MacFarland’s father broke his leg, Alan got a special delivery letter from his former high school professor, inviting him to accompany him as a sort of assistant, at a small salary, on an archaeological expedition to Egypt that was to sail from New York in three days.

      “I would have given you more notice if it had been possible,” wrote Professor Hodge, “but the vacancy only just occurred through the resignation of a young man who was taken seriously ill. I have recommended you, and I hope you will be able to accept. It will be the chance of your lifetime. The salary is not large nor the position notable, but the experience will be great. I am sure you will enjoy it. You are young, of course, but I have great belief in your character and ability, and have told our leader that I am sure you will make good. It will be necessary for you to write at once if you wish to hold the job, as there are other eager applicants; but you have precedence.”

      There followed a list of necessities that Alan must bring with him, and directions to the place of meeting with the rest of the expedition.

      Alan was sitting at his father’s desk in the Rockland Hardware store reading this letter. He had just come from the house, at his father’s request, to open the mail and answer one or two important letters that were expected. This letter of his own had been brought to the store by mistake instead of being delivered at the house, and therefore it happened that the great temptation of his young life was presented to him all alone, away from the watchful, loving eyes of his mother or his father.

      Alan’s first reaction was wonder and awe that he, Alan MacFarland, just a graduate of the Rockland High School, had been chosen for such a marvelous honor, a place in the great expedition to Egypt! There was nothing in the whole world of honors that Alan could think of that he would more desire to do. He had always been interested in archaeology, and his soul throbbed with eagerness. To go in company with Professor Hodge, who had given him his first interest in ancient things, seemed the height of bliss. His eyes shone as he read, and his breath came in quick gasps of wonder. He looked up at the last word of the letter with a dazed expression and stared about him, as if to make sure that he was awake and in the land of the living, not dreaming or anything.

      A chance like that to come to him! A smile broke over his face as he sat with the letter still in his hand and gazed through the iron grating that surrounded the cash desk. Across the store were shelves filled with neat boxes, green and brown and red, all labeled; gimlets and screwdrivers and chisels in orderly rows, but he saw instead a wide desert under a hot orient sky, and toilers in the sand, bringing forth treasures of the ancients. He saw himself with a grimy, happy face, a part of the great expedition, exploring tombs and pyramids and cities of another age.

      Suddenly the immediate environment snapped on his consciousness; bright gleaming tools of steel and iron—saws and hammers and nails and plows; and the desert faded. They fairly clamored at him for attention like so many helpless humans.

      “What are you going to do about us?” they asked. “Your father is helpless, and we are your responsibility.”

      Alan’s smile suddenly faded even as the desert had done.

      “But this is the chance of my lifetime!” he cried out indignantly to himself. “Surely Father would want me to accept. Surely he would not stand in my way.”

      “Yes, but are you willing to put it up to him?” winked an honest oatmeal boiler, aghast. “You know what your father told you this morning! You know how touched you were when he told you that he could bear the pain and the being laid aside, since he knew you were free to take over the store and that he could trust you to run it as well as he would have done himself.”

      “But there is Uncle Ned,” cried out Alan’s eager youth. “He has nothing in life to do now since he has retired, and surely he could look after things for a while till Dad is on deck again!”

      Then conscience spoke.

      “You know what your father said this very morning about Uncle Ned. You know he told you that Uncle Ned let everything run down, and got the books all mixed up those six weeks he had charge while your father went to California last year. And you know your father said there was a crisis just now in his affairs and that if he couldn’t tide things over for the next six weeks he would lose all he gained in his lifetime.”

      Alan’s hand make a quick nervous movement in laying down the letter, and a heavy paperweight in the form of a small steam engine, a souvenir of the last dinner of the United Hardware Dealers the elder MacFarland had attended, fell with a clatter to the floor.

      Alan stooped and picked it up, and it seemed as he did so that all the

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