I was sure if he lived that I'd get it back, and if
he died, I'd charge it up to profit and loss."

"I notice that Teddy says in his letter you refused to take the property
he left as payment for your debt," said Mrs. Rushton. "I think that was
fine of you, Aaron."

"I don't prey on widows and orphans," replied Aaron, dismissing the
matter with a curt wave of the hand. "Least of all, on the widow and
orphan of James Montgomery."

"But didn't you hear of this chest of gold at the time Mrs. Montgomery
wrote to you?" asked Mrs. Rushton.

"Only in a vague and jumbled way," answered Aaron. "She was so much
upset and distressed that I couldn't make much of her letter. I gathered
that he had taken a box containing a large amount of money aboard a
coastwise craft, and that he had been found later drifting in an open
boat. He had been wounded, and the presumption was, of course, that he
had been assaulted and robbed of the money. But, of course, I concluded,
as I suppose every one else did, that the money had been divided and
spent. At any rate, I gave it up for gone from that moment."

"Did you follow the matter up in any way?" asked his brother.

"Not to any great extent," was the answer. "I sent a specialist up to
Canada to see if he could do anything toward getting back poor
Montgomery's reason, and I offered a reward for the discovery and arrest
of the thieves. But nothing came of it, and after Montgomery died a year
or so later, I gave the matter up. I haven't thought of it for a long
time, until this letter came to-day."

"Well, it looks as though there is a chance at least of getting the
gold," commented Mansfield Rushton.

"After all these years!" added Mrs. Rushton, whose imagination had been
captured by the romance and tragedy of the story.

"Of course, it's only a chance," said Aaron, on whom doubts began to
crowd after the first exhilaration. "They're a long way off from finding
it yet. They have only the most slender kind of clues."

"I believe they'll do it," said Mansfield, buoyantly. "Those boys seem
to have a knack of getting what they go after."

"Yes," chimed in his wife, her face lighting up, "look at the way they
exposed that masquerade of the ghost out on the Garwood ranch this
summer. And think how cleverly they got on the trail of the tramps who
stole your watch."

"Ye-es," assented Aaron slowly, as though the concession was wrenched
from him. "They do seem to get there one way or the othe