Sally Dows

“I believe,” said Gabriel laughingly, “that you have been so bored here that you have actually played at gold-hunting for amusement.”

Uncle Sylvester took the pipe from his mouth and nodded.

“It’s a common diversion of yours,” said Marie audaciously.

Uncle Sylvester smiled sweetly.

“And have you been successful THIS TIME?” asked Marie.

“I got the color.”

“Eh?”

Uncle Sylvester rose and placed himself with his back to the fire, gently surveying the assembled group.

“I was interrupted in a story of gold-digging last evening,” he said blandly. “How far had I got?”

“You were down on the San Joaquin River in the spring of ‘50, with a chap named Flint,” chorused Cousins Jane and Emma promptly.

“Ah! yes,” said Uncle Sylvester. “Well, in those days there was a scarcity of money in the diggings. Gold dust there was in plenty, but no COIN. You can fancy it was a bother to weigh out a pinch of dust every time you wanted a drink of whiskey or a pound of flour; but there was no other legal tender. Pretty soon, however, a lot of gold and silver pieces found their way into circulation in our camp and the camps around us. They were foreign—old French and English coins. Here’s one of them that I kept.” He took from his pocket a gold coin and handed it to Gabriel.

Lane rose to his feet with an exclamation:

“Why, this is like the louis-d’or that grandfather saved through the war and gave to father.”

Uncle Sylvester took the coin back, placed it in his left eye, like a monocle, and winked gravely at the company.

“It is the SAME!” he went on quietly. “I was interested, for I had a good memory, and I remembered that, as a boy, grandfather had shown me one of those coins and told me he was keeping them for old Jules du Page, who didn’t believe in banks and bank-notes. Well, I traced them to a trader called Flint, who was shipping gold dust from Stockton to Peter Gunn & Sons, in New York.”

“To whom?” asked Gabriel quickly.

“Old Gunn—the father of your friend!” said Uncle Sylvester blandly. “We talked the matter over on our way to the station this morning. Well, to return. Flint only said that he had got them from a man called Thompson, who had got them from somebody else in exchange for goods. A year or two afterwards this same Thompson happened to be frozen up with me in Starvation Camp. When he thought he was dying he confessed that he had been bribed by Flint to say what he had said, but that he believed the coins were stolen. Meantime, Flint had disappeared. Other things claimed my attention. I had quite forgotten him, until one night, five years afterwards, I blundered into a deserted mining-camp, by falling asleep on my mule, who carried me across a broken flume, but—I think I told you that story already.”

“You never finished it,” said Cousin Jane sharply.

“Let me do so now, then. I was really saved by some Indians, who took me for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm. The first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the boys as ‘Old Fusil,’ or ‘Fusel Oil,’ who went into delirium tremens at the sight of me. Well, who do you suppose he turned out to be? Flint! Flint played out and ruined! Cast off and discarded by his relations in New York—the foundation of whose fortunes he had laid by the villainy they had accepted and condoned. For Flint, as the carpenter of the old homestead, had discovered the existence of a bricked closet in the wall of father’s study, partitioned it off so that he could break into it without detection and rifle it at his leisure, and who had thus carried off that part of grandfather’s hoard which father had concealed there. He knew it could never be missed by the descendants. But, through haste or ignorance, he DID NOT TOUCH THE PAPERS and documents also hidden there. And THEY told of the existence of grandfather’s second cache, or hiding-place, beneath this hearth, and were left for me to discover.”

He coolly relit his pipe, fixed his eyes on Marie without apparently paying attention to the breathless scrutiny of the others, and went on: “Flint, alias Pierre a Fusil, alias Gunn, died a maniac. I resolved to test the truth of his story. I came here. I knew the old homestead, as a boy who had wandered over every part of it, far better than you, Gabriel, or any one. The elder Gunn had only heard of it through the criminal disclosure of his relative, and only wished to absorb it through his son in time, and thus obliterate all trace of Flint’s outrage. I recognized the room perfectly—thanks to our dear Kitty, who had taken up the carpet, which thus disclosed the loose plank before the closet that was hidden by the partition. Under pretext of rearranging the room—for which Kitty will forgive me—I spent the day behind a locked door, making my way through the partition. There I found the rifled closet, but the papers intact. They contained a full description of the sum taken by Flint, and also of a larger sum buried in a cask beside this chimney. I had just finished unearthing it a few moments before you came. I had at first hoped to offer it to the family as a Christmas gift to-morrow, but”—He stopped and sucked slowly at his pipe.

“We anticipated you,” said Gabriel laughing.

“No,” said Uncle Sylvester coolly. “But because it don’t happen to belong to YOU at all! According to the paper I have in my pocket, which is about as legal a document as I ever saw, it is father’s free gift to Miss Marie du Page.”

Kitty threw her arms around her white and breathless friend with a joyful cry, and honest Gabriel’s face shone with unselfish gratification.

“For yourself, my dear Gabriel, you must be satisfied with the fact that Messrs. Peter Gunn & Sons will take back your wildcat stock at the price you paid for it. It is the price they pay for their share in this little transaction, as I had the honor of pointing out to Mr. Gunn on our way to the station this morning.”

“Then you think that young Mr. Gunn knew that Flint was his relation, and that he had stolen father’s money,” said Kitty, “and that Mr. Gunn only wanted to”—She stopped, with flashing eyes.

“I think he would have liked to have made an arrangement, my dear, that would keep the secret and the property in the family,” said Uncle Sylvester. “But I don’t think he suspected the existence of the second treasure here.”

“And then, sir,” said Cousin Jane, “it appears that all these wretched, unsatisfactory scraps of stories you were telling us were nothing after all but”—

“My way of telling THIS one,” said Uncle Sylvester.

As the others were eagerly gathering around the unearthed treasure, Marie approached him timidly, all her audacity gone, tears in her eyes, and his ring held hesitatingly between her fingers. “How can I thank you—and how CAN you ever forgive me?”

“Well,” said Uncle Sylvester, gazing at her critically, “you might keep the ring to think over it.”

notes

1

The “patrol” or local police who formerly had the surveillance of slaves.

2

It was a frontier superstition that the ball extracted from a gunshot wound, if swallowed by the wounded man, prevented inflammation or any supervening complications.