an' drown' peop' they don' count."

In the stateroom Ramsey knelt, opened the trunk, then the tin box, and
then, despite old Joy's reprehending moan, the document itself.

"I knew it!" she whispered elatedly, relocking the box and trunk. "I
guessed right!"

When at the forward end of the pantry gangway she came upon the twins
and "California" and shrank back into hiding, the will was in her hand.
In a tremble between staying and fleeing she heard the gold hunter, as
he stood with his hands full of yellow coin, declare himself a
Kentuckian and no abolitionist, and therefore understood instantly the
significance of Lucian's response:

"One thousand dollars."

Too eager for speech, she glided forth and at the Californian's back
halted before her brothers. But he had already smitten a fist into the
hungry palm of either twin and was saying as he unburdened it there:

"A hundred on account to you--same to you--balance when you show
title--she's mine!"

"She's mine!" cried the laughing girl.

The three men stared, but the twins hurried the gold into their pockets
while she laughed on to them: "Hand that back. You've got no title. This
is Uncle Dan's will and she's been mine for eleven years." On the stair
close by them she began to step up backward but stopped to add to the
Californian: "Take back your money and come trade with mom-a."

The twins showed instant conviction, but to them all dispossession was
robbery and Lucian broke out, first on Ramsey, "We don't give back one
dime!" then to the Californian, "You pushed it on us and we'll keep it!"
then to Julian, "He hasn't the faintest right to it now in law, morals,
or custom!" and then back to the Californian: "You sha'n't ever see a
copper of it!"

Ramsey was quick-witted again. She threw the gold hunter a glance which
conveyed to him the realization that to leave the money with the twins
was to put them at a hopeless disadvantage. Almost as quickly Lucian saw
the same thing and flashed it to Julian; but in that brief interval
their sister disappeared on the deck above, old Joy following, and while
the brothers lost another moment in a motionless contest of impulses the
Californian vanished after her. Lucian, with his breath drawn to call up
the empty stair, started forward but struck his knee-cap on a light,
gilded chair left there by some child. Burning with rage and trembling
with nervous exhaustion, he barely saved himself from lunging into two
men of sli