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 e