ness trip.

"Now go ahead, Joe. You were speaking to me a moment ago in conundrums,
and you have aroused my curiosity to a most uncomfortable degree."

Whereupon Joe sat down and told what had happened--all that had
happened--from Monday night to that very moment. Each little incident
he related,--every detail,--not forgetting his conversations with
'Frisco Kid nor his plans concerning him. His face flushed and he was
carried away with the excitement of the narrative, while Mr. Bronson
was almost as eager, urging him on whenever he slackened his pace,
but otherwise remaining silent.

"So you see," Joe concluded, "it could n't possibly have turned out
any better."

"Ah, well," Mr. Bronson deliberated judiciously, "it may be so, and then
again it may not."

"I don't see it." Joe felt sharp disappointment at his father's qualified
approval. It seemed to him that the return of the safe merited something
stronger.

That Mr. Bronson fully comprehended the way Joe felt about it was clearly
in evidence, for he went on: "As to the matter of the safe, all hail to
you, Joe! Credit, and plenty of it, is your due. Mr. Tate and myself have
already spent five hundred dollars in attempting to recover it. So
important was it that we have also offered five thousand dollars reward,
and but this morning were considering the advisability of increasing the
amount. But, my son,"--Mr. Bronson stood up, resting a hand affectionately
on his boy's shoulder,--"there are certain things in this world which are
of still greater importance than gold, or papers which represent what gold
may buy. How about _yourself_? That 's the point. Will you sell the best
possibilities of your life right now for a million dollars?"

Joe shook his head.

"As I said, that 's the point. A human life the money of the world cannot
buy; nor can it redeem one which is misspent; nor can it make full and
complete and beautiful a life which is dwarfed and warped and ugly. How
about yourself? What is to be the effect of all these strange adventures
on your life--_your_ life, Joe? Are you going to pick yourself up to-morrow
and try it over again? or the next day? or the day after? Do you
understand? Why, Joe, do you think for one moment that I would place
against the best value of my son's life the paltry value of a safe? And
_can_ I say, until time has told me, whether this trip of yours could not
possibly have been better? Such an experience is as potent for evil as