nder'd--I've
thought of a dozen fo'ks--but I sed nothin'--was it you?"

The outlaw smiled: "It come from the rich an' it went to the po'.
Come," he said--"that's somethin' we must settle."

He took up the lantern and led the way into the other room. Under a
ledge of rocks, securely hid, sat, in rows, half a dozen common water
buckets, made of red cedar, with tops fitting securely on them.

The outlaw spread a blanket on the sand, then knelt and, taking up a
bucket, removed the top and poured out its contents on the blanket.
They chuckled and rolled and tumbled over each other, the yellow
eagles and half eagles, like thoroughbred colts turned out in the
paddocks for a romp.

The old man's knees shook under him. He trembled so that he had to
sit down on the blanket. Then he ran his hand through them--his
fingers open, letting the coins fall through playfully.

Never before had he seen so much gold. Poor as he was and had ever
been--much and often as he had suffered--he and his, for the
necessities of life, even, knowing its value and the use he might
make of it, it thrilled him with a strange, nervous longing--a
childish curiosity to handle it and play with it.

Modest and brave men have looked on low-bosomed women in the glitter
of dissipative lights with the same feeling.

The old man gazed, silent--doubtless with the same awe which Keats
gave to Cortez, when he first looked on the Pacific and stood

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

The outlaw lifted another bucket and took off the lid. It also was
full. "There are five mo'," he said--"that last one is silver an'
this one--" He lifted the lid of a small cedar box. In it was a large
package, wrapped in water-proof. Unravelling it, he shoved out
packages of bank bills of such number and denomination as fairly made
the old preacher wonder.

"How much in all, Jack?"

"A little the rise of one hundred thousand dollars."

He pushed them back and put the buckets under their ledge of rocks.
"I'd give it all just to have little Jack here agin--an'--an'--start
out--a new man. This has cost me ten years of outlawry an' fo'teen
bullets. Now I've got all this an'--well--a hole in the groun' an'
little Jack in the hole. If you wanter preach a sermon on the folly
of pilin' up money," he went on half ironically, "here is yo' tex'.
All me an' little Jack needed or cu'd use, was a few clothes, some
bac'n an' coffee an' flour. Often I'd fill my pockets an' say: 'Well,