by
which to drag the heavy nugget, and left the camp in the dark of night.

He reached his treasure by daylight, and started along the trail. He
was not pursued, and ten days later, half starved, half mad, his
shoulders bleeding from the chafe of the rope, and every bone in his
body aching with the pain of fatigue, he dragged his burden onto a
rickety wharf at Punta Arenas where an eastbound steamer was coaling.
Her captain was an honest man. He took Quinbey on board, took him to
Boston, and helped him turn the nugget into cash--fifty thousand
dollars. Then Quinbey went home.

II

Quinbey had been right about the money in the bank. It was a tidy sum
to retain on deposit, and the bank officials had heartlessly refused to
pay any of it out to Mrs. Quinbey. She did not attempt to draw until
her sulks left her, which occurred after the jeweler, intent upon the
sale of a watch, had called upon her, and when the villagers had
informed her that Quinbey had gone fishing. Then, disappointed, and
somewhat worried over the future, she returned to the house on the
hill, and, as it was still cold, lit up the big base-burner from the
scanty stock of coal.

As the weeks grew into months and the fishing schooner did not return,
she did not, like the rest of the villagers, give her husband up as
lost--rather, she believed him alive, hoped for his return, and revised
her opinion of him.

Soon--yet long before the grocer, the butcher, and the coal man had
refused further credit--she realized that she loved the crude man she
had known but a month, but who had loved her for twenty years; and,
with tears streaming down her face, she prayed for his safety and
return with more fervency than for the beloved son at Andover. This
person wrote filial letters home, assuring her of protection and
support when he returned; but they brought her small comfort, for the
time was at hand when she must pay cash or go without the necessities
of life.

Then Sammy came home on his first vacation, and, learning of the money
in the bank, used his prestige and address to such advantage that he
persuaded the local authorities to declare Quinbey legally dead--an
easy matter on that coast of many wrecks.

Righteously indignant at the selfishness of the bank officials, he
induced his mother to withdraw the money--shrunk to eight thousand
dollars--from the bank, and allow him to take it to Boston, where, in a
larger and safer bank, it would draw interest,