THE GOLDEN HERMIT.
“Some’ne in there?” echoed the others in amazed tones.
“Yes—hark!” said the lad, holding up a finger.
Sure enough, above the moaning of the storm and the roar of the rain
came a sound like a faint groaning.
“Well, come on,” cried Bart; “no use stopping out here in the rain just
for that. Let’s go in.”
Reassured by his confident manner, the others crowded in. The interior
of the hut, not overlight at any time, was rendered doubly gloomy by the
mantle of blackness which the storm had flung over the heavens. It was
not till Frank had taken out a folding lantern from his pocket and lit
it with a lucifer from his folding match box that they were able to take
in the details of the strange interior in which they stood. Of course,
their first task was to look for the human being or animal that Billy
had heard groaning.
This did not take long. The hut was not divided into rooms, and was
unceiled, the rafters being right overhead. The lamp was flashed into
every corner.
To the boys’ amazement, the place was absolutely empty.
“I’m sure I heard somebody groaning or grumbling,” said Billy. “I’m
positive of it.”
“Well, maybe you are right, lad,” replied Bart Witherbee, “and I rather
think you are, for look here!”
He pointed to a rough sort of bunk formed of a framework of lumber in
one corner of the room.
“It’s warm,” he said, touching it with his hand, “somebody was lying
asleep here when we came up the trail—that’s as plain as print—and
look here, too,” he went on, pointing to other signs of human occupancy
the boys had not noticed when first they came in.
In rapid succession, he showed them some ashes glowing in a huge open
fireplace, in front of which was an ample hearthstone. There was also a
rude table in one corner, on which were the remains of what had been a
rude meal.
“But where has the man gone who was in here?” demanded Frank.
“Maybe out by the back door,” suggested Harry.
“There isn’t one,” rejoined Billy, “the door in front is the only way
out.”
“How about the windows?”
“The two in front are the only ones.”
“Well, that’s queer.”
“It certainly is.”
“See if there are any trap doors in the floor,” suggested Bart. “These
old miners are queer old chaps sometimes.”
But a close search of the floor did not reveal any trace of a trap door.
Much puzzled by the mystery, the boys retired to bed that night prepared
for any sudden alarm. A lamp was left burning, and their guns lay ready
to hand. But nothing occurred to mar the monotonous drumming of the rain
on the roof, and one by one they dropped off to sleep.
It was soon after midnight that Frank awakened with a strange feeling of
dread.
He looked about the room, but so far as he could see at first everything
was as it had been left when they went to sleep. All at once, however,
his attention was attracted to the fireplace by a slight scratching
sound. He gazed over toward the hearth, and to his unbounded
astonishment and no small alarm he saw the hearthstone suddenly begin to
swing slowly back, and, through the aperture thus created on the side
nearest the room, he saw human finger tips cautiously poking about.
Suddenly an entire hand was thrust through the crack.
[Illustration: Suddenly an entire hand was thrust through the crack.]
What was coming next Frank had no idea, but with a violently beating
heart he lay watching the aperture while a second hand joined the first
and gave the stone a feeble shove upward. It swung back on its invisible
hinges till a space of perhaps three feet yawned between it and the
floor, and then a face made its appearance.
It was the face of a very old man with venerable white beard and mild,
timid, blue eyes. Frank almost closed his eyes, and from under their
lashes watched the old man painfully lift himself out of the tunnel into
the room. Once in the room he tiptoed about among the sleepers, gazing
at them earnestly to make sure they were all asleep, and then, returning
to the hole beneath the hearthstone, reached down and drew out a bag
that seemed to weigh considerably.
But the exertion seemed to exhaust his feeble strength, for with a groan
he fell back into a rough chair, and the sack fell from his trembling
hands with a crash. The sudden sound woke all the adventurers, and they
sprang to their feet with their weapons in their hands.
The sight of the feeble old man, however, gasping in the chair, with his
hand on his heart as if he was in mortal pain, soon convinced them that
it was no dangerous enemy with whom they had to deal.
“Don’t, don’t hurt me,” cried the old man pitiably, as the boys and
their elders closed in about him. “I will tell you all, only don’t hurt
me. Spare a poor old man who has not long to live; let him spend his
last hours in peace.”
“We do not wish to hurt you,” Frank assured him, “we want to aid you.
Are you ill?”
“I am sick unto death. The exertion of carrying that load of ore from
the mine was too much for me. I do not think I have long to live.”
“Who are you?” asked Bart Witherbee gently.
“I am Jared Fogg,” replied the old man, closing his eyes as though too
weary to keep them open.
“Jared Fogg!” exclaimed the others in amazed tones.
“Yes; why do you seem so surprised?”
“Why, I am the man who found your lost mine,” exclaimed the miner.
“What! The man who staked out his claim there!” cried the old man.
“Yes; I thought you were dead. We all did, and I started out to find
your mysterious mine. As you never filed a claim to it, I thought I had
a right to stake it.”
“You are right; I never filed a claim to it. I did not want other miners
to come to the neighborhood as soon as they found how rich it was. So I
worked it all alone. As I got the good gold out I hid it all away.”
“Yes; go on,” said Bart Witherbee breathlessly.
“Well, I saw that some day sooner or later someone was bound to discover
it if I worked openly in it, so I started constructing a tunnel. The
mouth of it is under that hearthstone, and the other end emerges into
the shaft of the lost mine. For many years I have used it, and no one
has ever suspected that old Jared Fogg, the hermit who lived in this
hut, had thousands of dollars in gold. I am rich—ha—ha—I am rich.”
The old man’s face became convulsed.
“But,” he went on, “now that I am dying—ah, I know death when it is
coming on—I have a great wish to right a wrong I did years ago. My name
was not always Jared Fogg. It was once Jack Riggs. I was once a bandit
and a robber and did many, many wicked things. But one weighs on my
conscience more heavily than any of the others. One night we held up the
Rio Bravo stage. There was fighting, and I shot the stage driver and his
wife, who, when her husband fell from the box, seized the reins and
attempted to drive on. With them was their child, a lad of three or four
years. That disgusted me with crime. I reformed from that night. I took
the lad and raised him till he was six or seven, when he was stolen from
me by a wandering circus. I have never seen him since. If I could see
him, now that he has grown to man’s estate, and tell him that on my
death bed I beg his forgiveness for my wicked deed, I would die happy.
All these years I have thought of him. If I only knew where he was now.”
“Would you know him again if you saw him?” Bart Witherbee’s voice shook
strangely, and several times during the old man’s recital he had passed
his hand across his brow as if striving to recollect something. Now his
eye shone with a strange light, and he bent forward eagerly:
“Yes, among a thousand!”
“How?”
“By a peculiar mark on his arm, where he was shot accidentally by one of
my gang in the fight following the killing of his father.”
Bart rolled up his sleeve, and the old man gave a terrible cry as his
eyes fell on the dark-red scar the boys had often noticed.
“Forgive——,” he cried, stumbling to his feet and stretching out his
hands as if to keep from falling.
The next moment he had fallen forward with a crash.
He was dead.