But I haven't got the nerve.

"Ben, I'm going to tell you something. Just before Bill met his end, he
had a letter from the firm that he installed machinery for concerning the
final drawings of an ore-roaster that he had been working on for years. I
have often wondered if he sent those drawings to the firm before his
death, or if Williams got them and the letters. I've never seen a roaster
like his was to be. Some way, I've thought Williams sold those drawings.
If he did, Ben, I'd kill him, I believe. That's what makes me keep a
thinking of the boy. Those drawings would have brought enough then to
have educated him, and perhaps he's poor--poor like you and me, and can't
go to school, while that rascal, Williams, rides around in an automobile.
Some way, I feel like I'll find out, and then I'll--"

"Is that a fact! Well, that tarnal critter!" Ben puffed meditatively at
his pipe and gazed into the fire.

"I have decided to go back, Ben, and work the other claim up in the gulch
by Dad's. If I could get enough money ahead I'd get a detective and put
him on the case. I'm kind of a father to that boy, Ben, wherever he is,
and I ought to be finding him."

The meeting at the table was over, and the fellows crowded around the
fire before starting home, and, perhaps, to hear one of Ben's stories of
the early days. The stranger watched Willis closely for some minutes,
then he called to him.

"Lad, ain't you the boy that was in the wreck of the Rocky Mountain
Limited, early in the spring? I've been watching you, and you sure remind
me of him." Willis's face brightened. In a flash he recognized the
fireman. He advanced with extended hand.

"Why, yes, sir, I am the boy, and you are the fireman. I have been
looking at you all evening and wondering where I had ever seen you
before. It's the whiskers that threw me off. How is the broken leg?"

The stranger held the boy's hand in his own and looked into his face.

"We got out lucky, didn't we, lad? Have you ever seen the little
Englishman since that day? He was a dandy, wasn't he?"

Chuck had been listening to the foregoing conversation.

"What wreck? What Englishman? Who is your friend?" he questioned.

The stranger spoke. "Why, don't you know about the wreck? Has he never
told any of you?" In answer to a chorus of "No's," the stranger drew his
chair closer to the fire and began to tell the story.

"So the lad has never told you, eh? He is a splendid fellow, this lad. I
wan