at he was actually alive. He was
now lying upon the broad of his back, thus leaving all his pockets
exposed. Acting upon an impulse that he could not restrain, Terry went
over to him and made a thorough search of the pockets. The result was
the discovery of three more double-eagles, making five in all.

One hundred dollars! more money by far than Black Mike had ever had at
once in his life before. How could he have honestly come by it?
Unknown to each other the same thought was forming in the mind of the
mother and son, and they dared not look into one another's eyes lest it
should be revealed. Mr. Hobart had told Terry that the black bag
contained a very large amount of money in gold, and this the boy had
duly repeated at home.

At last the silence became unendurable to both. Unable to restrain
herself any longer, Mrs. Ahearn caught Terry by the arm, and drew him
towards her.

"Holy Mary!" she murmured, as though praying for strength; and then,
after a moment's pause, added in a hoarse whisper, "Could your father
have stolen it, Terry?"

Terry started as if he had been struck, for his mother had uttered the
very question that possessed his own mind. He did not hold towards his
father a very warm affection. Black Mike's treatment of him from his
babyhood had been too consistently unfatherly for that. But the
thought of being arrested and sent to the grim granite penitentiary out
by the North-West Arm filled him with horror.

"Surely not, mother," he responded with a warmth that was increased by
his desire to convince himself as well as his mother. "It's not the
likes of father to be stealing money; somebody must have given it to
him."

The suggestion was a very unlikely one, yet they both sought to take
comfort from it. Gold was very plentiful in Halifax in those days, and
the successful blockade-runners lavished it with a free hand. Some one
of them, whose wits had been stolen away by strong drink, might have
filled Black Mike's pockets in a fit of reckless generosity.

But the more Terry thought over this the more improbable did it seem,
and he felt himself, however reluctantly, thrown back upon the only
other alternative to which almost unconsciously he gave expression.

"If father did steal the money," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the
drunken form, "where do you think he could have got it?"

He put the question because, although he had already answered it in his
own mind, he shrank from