The apartment he entered was really only a lumber-room or loft over the
wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and which
revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the hollow sham of
the whole structure. But in more violent contrast to the fresher
glories of the other part of the house were its contents, which were
the heterogeneous collection of old furniture, old luggage, and
cast-off clothing, left over from the past life in the old cabin. It
was a much plainer record of the simple beginnings of the family than
Mrs. Mulrady cared to have remain in evidence, and for that reason it
had been relegated to the hidden recesses of the new house, in the hope
that it might absorb or digest it. There were old cribs, in which the
infant limbs of Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old
looking-glasses, that had reflected their shining, soapy faces, and
Mamie's best chip Sunday hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn
out in active service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose
long drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and
old toys. There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old
frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London News" of a
Christmas gathering in an old English country house. He stopped and
picked up this print, which he had often seen before, gazing at it with
a new and singular interest. He wondered if Mamie had seen anything of
this kind in England, and why couldn't he have had something like it
here, in their own fine house, with themselves and a few friends? He
remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless
doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal
Christmas dinner. There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another
Christmas had brought to Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast
trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How
they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of
thing--and yet--yet it would have been rather comfortable to have all
been together again here. Would THEY have been more comfortable? No!
Yet then he might have had something to do, and been less lonely
to-morrow. What of that? He HAD something to do: to look after this
immense fortune. What more could a man want, or should he want? It
was rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything
they wanted, to be wanting anything more. He laid down the print
gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk handkerchief,
and slowly left the room.
The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he shut
it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door of his
office. He set diligently to work by the declining winter light, until
he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese waiter to tell him
that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady religiously adhered to in
place of the late dinner of civilization--was ready in the dining-room.
Mulrady mechanically obeyed the summons; but on entering the room the
oasis of a few plates in a desert of white table-cloth which awaited
him made him hesitate. In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic
mahogany ecclesiastical sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked
like the appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and
to-day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of
a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most depressing.
"You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a sudden
inspiration. "I'll eat it there."
He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not require
even the stimulation of company. He had just finished, when his Irish
cook--the one female servant of the house--came to ask permission to be
absent that evening and the next day.
"I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the Christmas
Day? And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-and-Ready that
are invitin' me."
"Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another vague
inspiration. "I'll stand treat."
"Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman! But it's the likes of
them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."
There was so much truth in this that Mulrady checked a sigh as he gave
the required permission, without saying that he had intended to remain.
He could cook his own breakfast: he had done it before; and it would be
something to occupy him. As to his dinner, perhaps he could go to the
hotel at Rough-and-Ready. He worked on until the night had well
advanced. Then, overcome with a certain restlessness that disturbed
him, he was forced to put his books and papers away. It had begun to
blow in fitful gusts, and occasionally the rain was driven softly
across the panes like the passing of childish fingers. This disturbed
him more than the monotony of silence, for he was not a nervous man.
He seldom read a book, and the county paper furnished him only the
financial and mercantile news which was part of his business. He knew
he could not sleep if he went to bed. At last he rose, opened the
window, and looked out from pure idleness of occupation. A splash of
wheels in the distant muddy road and fragments of a drunken song showed
signs of an early wandering reveller. There were no lights to be seen
at the closed works; a profound darkness encompassed the house, as if
the distant pines in the hollow had moved up and round it. The silence
was broken now only by the occasional sighing of wind and rain. It was
not an inviting night for a perfunctory walk; but an idea struck
him--he would call upon the Slinns, and anticipate his next day's
visit! They would probably have company, and be glad to see him: he
could tell the girls of Mamie and her success. That he had not thought
of this before was a proof of his usual self-contained isolation, that
he thought of it now was an equal proof that he was becoming at last
accessible to loneliness. He was angry with himself for what seemed to
him a selfish weakness.
He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been
lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders,
and locked the front door of the house behind him. It was well that
the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively
found the trail, for the night was very dark. At times he was warned
only by the gurgling of water of little rivulets that descended the
hill and crossed his path. Without the slightest fear, and with
neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he recalled how, the winter
before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros, crossing this hill at night, had
fallen down the chasm of a landslip caused by the rain, and was found
the next morning with his neck broken in the gully. Don Caesar had to
take care of the man's family. Suppose such an accident should happen
to him? Well, he had made his will. His wife and children would be
provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he had
arranged for that. Would anybody miss him? Would his wife, or his
son, or his daughter? No. He felt such a sudden and overwhelming
conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as suddenly as if the
chasm had opened before him. No! It was the truth. If he were to
disappear forever in the darkness of the Christmas night there was none
to feel his loss. His wife would take care of Mamie; his son would
take care of himself, as he had before--relieved of even the scant
paternal authority he rebelled against. A more imaginative man than
Mulrady would have combated or have followed out this idea, and then
dismissed it; to the millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a
deduction that, having once presented itself to his perception, was
already a recognized fact. For the first time in his life he felt a
sudden instinct of something like aversion towards his family, a
feeling that even his son's dissipation and criminality had never
provoked. He hurried on angrily through the darkness.
It was very strange; the old house should be almost before him now,
across the hollow, yet there were no indications of light! It was not
until he actually reached the garden fence, and the black bulk of
shadow rose out against the sky, that he saw a faint ray of light from
one of the lean-to windows. He went to the front door and knocked.
After waiting in vain for a reply, he knocked again. The second knock
proving equally futile, he tried the door; it was unlocked, and,
pushing it open, he walked in. The narrow passage was quite dark, but
from his knowledge of the house he knew the "lean-to" was next to the
kitchen, and, passing through the dining-room into it, he opened the
door of the little room from which the light proceeded. It came from a
single candle on a small table, and beside it, with his eyes moodily
fixed on the dying embers of the fire, sat old Slinn. There was no
other light nor another human being in the whole house.
For the instant Mulrady, forgetting his own feelings in the mute
picture of the utter desolation of the helpless man, remained
speechless on the threshold. Then, recalling himself, he stepped
forward and laid his hand gayly on the bowed shoulders.
"Rouse up out o' this, old man! Come! this won't do. Look! I've run
over here in the rain, jist to have a sociable time with you all."
"I knew it," said the old man, without looking up; "I knew you'd come."
"You knew I'd come?" echoed Mulrady, with an uneasy return of the
strange feeling of awe with which he regarded Slinn's abstraction.
"Yes; you were alone--like myself--all alone!"
"Then, why in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just now?"
he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness. "Where's
your daughters?"
"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."
"And your son?"
"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."
"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."
"So might yours."
He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted
conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did
not appear to notice it.
"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without
them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have a good
time, you and me. Let's see--you haven't any one you can send to my
house, hev you?"
"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly. "There is no
one here."
"All right," said the millionaire, briskly. "I'll go myself. Do you
think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a fire in the
kitchen while I'm gone? It used to be mighty comfortable in the old
times."
He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have
infused into him some of his own energy. He then added, "Now, don't
you get yourself down again into that chair until I come back," and
darted out into the night once more.
In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad shoulders,
which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting, and laid it
before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen. "It's something
the old woman got for her party, that didn't come off," he said,
apologetically. "I reckon we can pick out enough for a spread. That
darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh,
"because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man!'
Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of
the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a
day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for
my Christmas dinner."
"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.
"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly. "Why, it's
only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as I am
their boss. I don't mind a man's being independent," he continued,
taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a common "gunny
bag"--used for potatoes. "We're independent ourselves, ain't we,
Slinn?"
His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had
become natural. Slinn, looking at his brightened eye and fresher
color, could not help thinking he was more like his own real self at
this moment than in his counting-house and offices--with all his
simplicity as a capitalist. A less abstracted and more observant
critic than Slinn would have seen in this patient aptitude for real
work, and the recognition of the force of petty detail, the dominance
of the old market-gardener in his former humble, as well as his later
more ambitious, successes.
"Heaven keep us from being dependent upon our children!" said Slinn,
darkly.
"Let the young ones alone to-night; we can get along without them, as
they can without us," said Mulrady, with a slight twinge as he thought
of his reflections on the hillside. "But look here, there's some
champagne and them sweet cordials that women like; there's jellies and
such like stuff, about as good as they make 'em, I reckon; and
preserves, and tongues, and spiced beef--take your pick! Stop, let's
spread them out." He dragged the table to the middle of the floor, and
piled the provisions upon it. They certainly were not deficient in
quality or quantity. "Now, Slinn, wade in."
"I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into a
chair before the fire.
"No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to do
about this time. Some folks think they can't be happy without they're
getting outside o' suthin', and my directors down at 'Frisco can't do
any business without a dinner. Take some champagne, to begin with."
He opened a bottle, and filled two tumblers. "It's past twelve
o'clock, old man, so here's a merry Christmas to you, and both of us ez
is here. And here's another to our families--ez isn't."
They both drank their wine stolidly. The rain beat against the windows
sharply, but without the hollow echoes of the house on the hill. "I
must write to the old woman and Mamie, and say that you and me had a
high old time on Christmas Eve."
"By ourselves," added the invalid.
Mr. Mulrady coughed. "Nat'rally--by ourselves. And her provisions,"
he added, with a laugh. "We're really beholden to HER for 'em. If she
hadn't thought of having them--"
"For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them--would you?" said Slinn,
slowly, gazing at the fire.
"No," said Mulrady, dubiously. After a pause he began more
vivaciously, and as if to shake off some disagreeable thought that was
impressing him, "But I mustn't forget to give you YOUR Christmas, old
man, and I've got it right here with me." He took the folded envelope
from his pocket, and, holding it in his hand with his elbow on the
table, continued, "I don't mind telling you what idea I had in giving
you what I'm goin' to give you now. I've been thinking about it for a
day or two. A man like you don't want money--you wouldn't spend it. A
man like you don't want stocks or fancy investments, for you couldn't
look after them. A man like you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor
a gold-headed cane, when it's got to be used as a crutch. No, sir.
What you want is suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always
there before you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone.
That's land! And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give
away this house and that garden, if it wasn't that I've held out agin
the old woman and Mamie on that point, you should have THIS house and
THAT garden. But, mebbee, for the same reason that I've told you, I
want that land to keep for myself. But I've selected four acres of the
hill this side of my shaft, and here's the deed of it. As soon as
you're ready, I'll put you up a house as big as this--that shall be
yours, with the land, as long as you live, old man; and after that your
children's."
"No; not theirs!" broke in the old man, passionately. "Never!"
Mulrady recoiled for an instant in alarm at the sudden and unexpected
vehemence of his manner, "Go slow, old man; go slow," he said,
soothingly. "Of course, you'll do with your own as you like." Then,
as if changing the subject, he went on cheerfully: "Perhaps you'll
wonder why I picked out that spot on the hillside. Well, first, because
I reserved it after my strike in case the lead should run that way, but
it didn't. Next, because when you first came here you seemed to like
the prospect. You used to sit there looking at it, as if it reminded
you of something. You never said it did. They say you was sitting on
that boulder there when you had that last attack, you know; but," he
added, gently, "you've forgotten all about it."
"I have forgotten nothing," said Slinn, rising, with a choking voice.
"I wish to God I had; I wish to God I could!"
He was on his feet now, supporting himself by the table. The subtle
generous liquor he had drunk had evidently shaken his self-control, and
burst those voluntary bonds he had put upon himself for the last six
months; the insidious stimulant had also put a strange vigor into his
blood and nerves. His face was flushed, but not distorted; his eyes
were brilliant, but not fixed; he looked as he might have looked to
Masters in his strength three years before on that very hillside.
"Listen to me, Alvin Mulrady," he said, leaning over him with burning
eyes. "Listen, while I have brain to think and strength to utter, why
I have learnt to distrust, fear, and hate them! You think you know my
story. Well, hear the truth from ME to-night, Alvin Mulrady, and do
not wonder if I have cause."
He stopped, and, with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and
inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to
calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like
you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a theory, and
the patience and energy to carry it out. I selected a spot that had
all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid, counsel or
assistance of any kind, worked it for six months, without rest or
cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain my body. Well, I
made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a blunder of good luck, a
fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you for it--but in perfect
demonstration of my theory, the reward of my labor. It was no pocket,
but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly hunted down and found--a
fortune!
"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never knew
what privations I had undergone until that moment of my success, when I
found I could scarcely think or move! I staggered out into the open
air. The only human soul near me was a disappointed prospector, a man
named Masters, who had a tunnel not far away. I managed to conceal
from him my good fortune and my feeble state, for I was suspicious of
him--of any one; and as he was going away that day I thought I could
keep my secret until he was gone. I was dizzy and confused, but I
remember that I managed to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my
good fortune, and begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw
Masters go. I don't remember anything else. They picked me up on the
road, near that boulder, as you know."
"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-driver's
account of his discovery.
"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered my
senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost my
memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy, while I
lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say, because I
could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature required it,
that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came to my senses until
after my son found me in the hospital. They SAY that--but I tell you
to-night, Alvin Mulrady," he said, raising his voice to a hoarse
outcry, "I tell you that it is a lie! I came to my senses a week after
I lay on that hospital cot; I kept my senses and memory ever after
during the three years that I was there, until Harry brought his cold,
hypocritical face to my bedside and recognized me. Do you understand?
I, the possessor of millions, lay there a pauper. Deserted by wife and
children--a spectacle for the curious, a sport for the doctors--AND I
KNEW IT! I heard them speculate on the cause of my helplessness. I
heard them talk of excesses and indulgences--I, that never knew wine or
woman! I heard a preacher speak of the finger of God, and point to me.
May God curse him!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, gently.
"I heard them speak of me as a friendless man, an outcast, a
criminal--a being whom no one would claim. They were right; no one
claimed me. The friends of others visited them; relations came and
took away their kindred; a few lucky ones got well; a few, equally
lucky, died! I alone lived on, uncared for, deserted.
"The first year," he went on more rapidly, "I prayed for their coming.
I looked for them every day. I never lost hope. I said to myself,
'She has not got my letter; but when the time passes she will be
alarmed by my silence, and then she will come or send some one to seek
me.' A young student got interested in my case, and, by studying my
eyes, thought that I was not entirely imbecile and unconscious. With
the aid of an alphabet, he got me to spell my name and town in
Illinois, and promised by signs to write to my family. But in an evil
moment I told him of my cursed fortune, and in that moment I saw that
he thought me a fool and an idiot. He went away, and I saw him no
more. Yet I still hoped. I dreamed of their joy at finding me, and
the reward that my wealth would give them. Perhaps I was a little weak
still, perhaps a little flighty, too, at times; but I was quite happy
that year, even in my disappointment, for I had still hope!"
He paused, and again composed his face with his paralyzed hand; but his
manner had become less excited, and his voice was stronger.
"A change must have come over me the second year, for I only dreaded
their coming now and finding me so altered. A horrible idea that they
might, like the student, believe me crazy if I spoke of my fortune made
me pray to God that they might not reach me until after I had regained
my health and strength--and found my fortune. When the third year
found me still there--I no longer prayed for them--I cursed them! I
swore to myself that they should never enjoy my wealth; but I wanted to
live, and let them know I had it. I found myself getting stronger; but
as I had no money, no friends, and nowhere to go, I concealed my real
condition from the doctors, except to give them my name, and to try to
get some little work to do to enable me to leave the hospital and seek
my lost treasure. One day I found out by accident that it had been
discovered! You understand--my treasure!--that had cost me years of
labor and my reason; had left me a helpless, forgotten pauper. That
gold I had never enjoyed had been found and taken possession of by
another!"
He checked an exclamation from Mulrady with his hand. "They say they
picked me up senseless from the floor, where I must have fallen when I
heard the news--I don't remember--I recall nothing until I was
confronted, nearly three weeks after, by my son, who had called at the
hospital, as a reporter for a paper, and had accidentally discovered me
through my name and appearance. He thought me crazy, or a fool. I
didn't undeceive him. I did not tell him the story of the mine to
excite his doubts and derision, or, worse (if I could bring proof to
claim it), have it perhaps pass into his ungrateful hands. No; I said
nothing. I let him bring me here. He could do no less, and common
decency obliged him to do that."
"And what proof could you show of your claim?" asked Mulrady, gravely.
"If I had that letter--if I could find Masters," began Slinn, vaguely.
"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?"
continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to
increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability.
"I don't know--I sometimes think--" He stopped, sat down again, and
passed his hands across his forehead. "I have seen the letter
somewhere since. Yes," he went on, with sudden vehemence, "I know it,
I have seen it! I--" His brows knitted, his features began to work
convulsively; he suddenly brought his paralyzed hand down, partly
opened, upon the table. "I WILL remember where."
"Go slow, old man; go slow."
"You asked me once about my visions. Well, that is one of them. I
remember a man somewhere showing me that letter. I have taken it from
his hands and opened it, and knew it was mine by the specimens of gold
that were in it. But where--or when--or what became of it, I cannot
tell. It will come to me--it MUST come to me soon."
He turned his eyes upon Mulrady, who was regarding him with an
expression of grave curiosity, and said bitterly, "You think me crazy.
I know it. It needed only this."
"Where is this mine," asked Mulrady, without heeding him.
The old man's eyes swiftly sought the ground.
"It is a secret, then?"
"No."
"You have spoken of it to any one?"
"No."
"Not to the man who possesses it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I wouldn't take it from him."
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because that man is yourself!"
In the instant of complete silence that followed they could hear that
the monotonous patter of rain on the roof had ceased.
"Then all this was in MY shaft, and the vein I thought I struck there
was YOUR lead, found three years ago in YOUR tunnel. Is that your
idea?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't sabe why you don't want to claim it."
"I have told you why I don't want it for my children. I go further,
now, and I tell you, Alvin Mulrady, that I was willing that your
children should squander it, as they were doing. It has only been a
curse to me; it could only be a curse to them; but I thought you were
happy in seeing it feed selfishness and vanity. You think me bitter and
hard. Well, I should have left you in your fool's paradise, but that I
saw to-night, when you came here, that your eyes had been opened like
mine. You, the possessor of my wealth, my treasure, could not buy your
children's loving care and company with your millions, any more than I
could keep mine in my poverty. You were to-night lonely and forsaken,
as I was. We were equal, for the first time in our lives. If that
cursed gold had dropped down the shaft between us into the hell from
which it sprang, we might have clasped hands like brothers across the
chasm."
Mulrady, who in a friendly show of being at his ease had not yet
resumed his coat, rose in his shirt-sleeves, and, standing before the
hearth, straightened his square figure by drawing down his waistcoat on
each side with two powerful thumbs. After a moment's contemplative
survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he raised his eyes to
Slinn. They were small and colorless; the forehead above them was low,
and crowned with a shock of tawny reddish hair; even the rude strength
of his lower features was enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like
beard; but for the first time in his life the whole face was impressed
and transformed with a strong and simple dignity.
"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between you
and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is doo and
right from them to us. Afore we preach at them for playing in the
slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we mout ez well
remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own sluice-boxes,
where we wash our gold. So we'll just put THEM behind us, so," he
continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful hand towards the
chimney, "and goes on. The next thing that crops up ahead of us is
your three years in the hospital, and wot you went through at that
time. I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you, and that you didn't have
it about as big as it's made; but ez you'll allow that you'd hev had
that for three years, whether I'd found your mine or whether I hadn't,
I think we can put THAT behind us, too. There's nothin' now left to
prospect but your story of your strike. Well, take your own proofs.
Masters is not here; and if he was, accordin' to your own story, he
knows nothin' of your strike that day, and could only prove you were a
disappointed prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you
wrote to never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only
your own story without proof! There is not a business man ez would
look at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe
you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez
wouldn't say ez you'd invented it. Slinn, I'm a business man--I am
your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I don't
think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good one!
"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine
to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a
deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken. For your own sake, and the sake
of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly than you
hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will spare
neither time nor money to help you to do it. I have more than doubled
the amount that you would have had, had you taken the mine the day you
came from the hospital. When you prove to me that your story is
true--and we will find some way to prove it, if it IS true--that amount
will be yours at once, without the need of a word from law or lawyers.
If you want my name to that in black and white, come to the office
to-morrow, and you shall have it."
"And you think I'll take it now?" said the old man passionately. "Do
you think that your charity will bring back my dead wife, the three
years of my lost life, the love and respect of my children? Or do you
think that your own wife and children, who deserted you in your wealth,
will come back to you in your poverty? No! Let the mine stay, with
its curse, where it is--I'll have none of it!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, quietly, putting on his
coat. "You will take the mine if it is yours; if it isn't, I'll keep
it. If it is yours, you will give your children a chance to sho what
they can do for you in your sudden prosperity, as I shall give mine a
chance to show how they can stand reverse and disappointment. If my
head is level--and I reckon it is--they'll both pan out all right."
He turned and opened the door. With a quick revulsion of feeling,
Slinn suddenly seized Mulrady's hand between both of his own, and
raised it to his lips. Mulrady smiled, disengaged his hand gently, and
saying soothingly, "Go slow, old man; go slow," closed the door behind
him, and passed out into the clear Christmas dawn.
For the stars, with the exception of one that seemed to sparkle
brightly over the shaft of his former fortunes, were slowly paling. A
burden seemed to have fallen from his square shoulders as he stepped
out sturdily into the morning air. He had already forgotten the lonely
man behind him, for he was thinking only of his wife and daughter. And
at the same moment they were thinking of him; and in their elaborate
villa overlooking the blue Mediterranean at Cannes were discussing, in
the event of Mamie's marriage with Prince Rosso e Negro, the
possibility of Mr. Mulrady's paying two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, the gambling debts of that unfortunate but deeply
conscientious nobleman.