He sat down again, fixed his gla.s.ses on the bridge of his nose and again ran over the contents of the letter.
"For goodness" sake, Aaron, don"t keep me on tenter-hooks!" cried Mrs.
Rushton, no longer able to restrain her curiosity. "What can Teddy have to say that makes you feel so good?"
"Here," he replied, thrusting the letter into her hand, "read it for yourself."
She took it, while he resumed his pacing, and for the first time in years he actually hummed a tune.
"A chest of gold!" he muttered to himself. "Twelve thousand dollars!"
Mrs. Rushton hurriedly ran over the first few lines of the letter. Then she uttered a frightened exclamation and her cheeks grew pale. She had reached the part where Teddy told of Fred"s daring exploit in diving overboard to rescue Ross.
"A shark!" she exclaimed. "And my Fred in the water!"
"Bother the shark," cried Aaron impatiently. "It didn"t bite him, did it?"
"No, but it might have," returned Fred"s mother, in tones that were a blending of pride and terror. "My brave, rash boy!"
"Your "brave, rash boy" is all right," retorted Aaron. "Get on to the really important part of the letter."
Mrs. Rushton darted an indignant glance at her brother-in-law, but went on, her eyes shining and her breath coming fast. When she had finished she was almost as excited as Aaron Rushton himself.
They looked at each other in mutual congratulation, he rejoicing in the unexpected windfall, she exulting in the part her boys had played in the affair.
At that moment Mr. Mansfield Rushton, returning from business, strode into the room. He tossed his hat on a chair and greeted his wife affectionately.
"You seem to be conducting a correspondence school, judging from the letters on hand," he said gaily.
He seemed to bring a flood of sunshine with him, and it was easy to see where Fred and Teddy got their high spirits and joyous outlook on life.
"You"d never guess what"s happened, Mansfield!" cried his wife. "We"ve just got letters from the boys and there"s the greatest news," she added proudly.
"Let"s see them," he said with quick interest.
"Read this one first," she said, thrusting Teddy"s letter into his hand.
"Why!" he said in surprise, as he glanced at the address, "this is directed to Aaron."
"Yes," Mrs. Rushton replied. She could not forbear the thrust and added: "Aaron thought it was an apology."
Aaron Rushton squirmed in his chair a little uncomfortably.
"Never mind what I thought," he growled. "Go ahead, Mansfield, and then we"ll talk the matter over."
Mansfield Rushton"s quick eye ran rapidly over the lines while the others watched him.
"Hurrah for Fred and Teddy!" he cried at the end. "They"re boys worth having, eh, Agnes? What"s your opinion, Aaron?" he added slyly.
"They"ve done very well in this case," his brother was forced to admit, though it cost him a pang. "If this thing really pans out as I hope it will, I"ll see that they get a liberal share of what they turn up."
"Oh, they"ll get all the pay they want in the fun of hunting for it,"
laughed their father. "I know if I were their age, there"d be nothing that would suit me better than searching for hidden gold. I"m so much of a boy even now, that if I were down there I"d go into the thing with the same zest as the boys themselves."
"I"m going to write to them this very night," said Aaron, "and send them a little money for current expenses. They may run across somebody who can give them some information, and there"s nothing like a little money to make people talk."
"Well, I certainly hope you get this, Aaron," said his brother heartily.
"Twelve thousand dollars is a whole lot of money."
"It certainly is in these hard times," answered Aaron. "I"ve been hit rather hard in some of my investments lately, and this would do a good deal toward helping me out of the hole."
"How is it that you never happened to mention this matter to me?" asked Mansfield. "I never heard you speak of Montgomery or of any money that he owed you."
"It was a long time ago, when I lent it to him," returned Aaron. "All of fifteen years, I reckon."
"It seems to me that it was a good deal to put into one loan," remarked Mansfield. "What security did he offer?"
"It wasn"t a matter of security, so much as it was of friendship and grat.i.tude," was the answer. "James Montgomery was one of the most upright men I ever met. His word was his bond, and when he borrowed money it was his character that was the best collateral.
"He had lent me money when I was struggling to get ahead in the world. I had expanded too rapidly in my desire to get ahead, and I was so tied up and so in need of ready cash that I was right on the brink of failure. I couldn"t get a loan from the banks, and I was almost in despair when I applied to James Montgomery. He went over my affairs with me, saw that I was really solvent, and that the trouble was only that immediate cash was needed to pull me through.
"He was doing well in business then, and he lent me the money and gave me all the time I needed to pay it back. It wasn"t long before I was on my feet again, and the first thing I did was to pay him back the full amount with interest.
"I vowed to myself then, that if the chance ever offered, I"d do the same by him as he had done by me. And it wasn"t a meaningless vow, for I"ve never felt more warmly toward any one outside my own people before or since.
"It was some years, though, before I got my chance. Then I learned that he was in straits. He had built up a big business, but hard times came and squeezed him, and a big bank failure put the finishing touch to his ruin.
"I didn"t know of his predicament until it was too late to save him. But after he had recovered from the illness that followed his failure, I went to him and offered him as much money as he needed to start over again. His wife had a little property on the coast of Canada and with enough money to develop it, it promised to yield big returns. All told, I lent him about twelve thousand dollars.
"He paid the interest promptly every six months, and I never worried about the princ.i.p.al. 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 a.s.saulted 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."