ago to seek his fortune in the Klondike;
whose letter, written in San Francisco and posted in Omaha, had reached
her the month before; whom the police of several cities were looking for
at her behest.

"Auntie!" cried Emily again.

Thankful shook her head. "Help me to a chair, Emily," she begged weakly.
"This--this is--my soul and body! Jedediah come alive again!"

The returned gold-hunter swallowed several times.

"Thankful," he faltered, "I know you must feel pretty hard agin me,
but--but, you see--"

"Hush! hush! Don't speak to me for a minute. Let me get my bearin's, for
mercy sakes, if I can. . . . Jedediah--HERE!"

"Yes--yes, I'm here. I am, honest. I--"

"Sshh! You're here now, but--but where have you been all this time? For
a man that is, I presume likely, loaded down with money--I presume you
must be loaded down with it; you remember you'd said you'd never come
back until you was--for that kind of a man I must say you look pretty
down at the heel."

"Thankful--"

"Have you worn out your clothes luggin' the money around?"

"Auntie, don't. Look at him. Think!"

"Hush, Emily! I am lookin' at him and I'm thinkin', too. I'm thinkin'
of how much I put up with afore he run off and left me, and how I've
worried and laid awake nights thinkin' he was dead. Where have you been
all this time? Why haven't you written?"

"I did write."

"You wrote when you was without a cent and wanted to get money from me.
You didn't write before. Let me be, Emily; you don't know what I've gone
through on account of him and now he comes sneakin' into my house in the
middle of the night, without a word that he was comin', sneakin' in like
a thief and frightenin' us half to death and--"

Jedediah interrupted. "Sneakin' in!" he repeated, with a desperate move
of his hands. "I had to sneak in. I was scairt to come in when you
was up and awake. I knew you'd be down on me like a thousand of brick.
I--I--Oh, you don't know what I've been through, Thankful, or you'd
pity me, 'stead of pitchin' into me like this. I've been a reg'lar
tramp--that's what I've been, a tramp. Freezin' and starvin' and workin'
in bar-rooms! Why, I beat my way on a freight train all the way here
from New Bedford, and I've been hidin' out back of the house waitin' for
you to go to bed, so's I'd dare come in."

"So's you'd dare come in! What did you want to come in for if I wa'n't
here?"

"I wanted to leave a note for you, that's why. I wanted to leave a