in
unmanageable anger. He damned me with reproaches, said I had stolen his
inheritance, poisoned his father's mind against him and slipped into the
house and lands. 'Pretentious and perfidious' is what he called me. I
was firm and gentle. But he grew violent and a thing happened."

The man put up his hand and moved it along in the air above the table.

"There was a secretary beside the hearth in my father's room. It was an
old piece with drawers below and glass doors above. These doors had not
been opened for many years, for there was nothing on the shelves behind
them--one could see that--except some rows of the little wooden boxes
that indigo used to be sold in at the country stores."

The hunchback paused as though to get the details of his story precisely
in relation.

"I sat at my father's table in the middle of the room. My brother David
was a great, tall man, like Saul. In his anger, as he gesticulated by
the hearth, his elbow crashed through the glass door of this secretary;
the indigo boxes fell, burst open on the floor, and a hidden store of my
father's money was revealed. The wooden boxes were full of gold pieces!"

He stopped and passed his fingers over his projecting chin.

"I was in fear, for I was alone in the house. Every negro was at a
distant frolic. And I was justified in that fear. My brother leaped on
me, struck me a stunning blow on the chest over the heart, gathered up
the gold, took my horse and fled. At daybreak the negroes found me on
the floor, unconscious. Then you came, Pendleton. The negroes had washed
up the litter from the hearth where the indigo about the coins in the
boxes had been shaken out."

My father interrupted:

"The negroes said the floor had been scrubbed when they found you."

"They were drunk," continued the hunchback with no concern. "And, does
one hold a drunken negro to his fact? But you saw for yourself the
wooden boxes, round, three inches high, with tin lids, and of a diameter
to hold a stack of golden eagles, and you saw the indigo still sticking
about the sides of these boxes where the coins had lain."

"I did," replied my father. "I observed it carefully, for I thought the
gold pieces might turn up sometime, and the blue indigo stain might be
on them when they first appeared."

Dillworth leaned far back in his chair, his legs tangled under him, his
eyes on my father, in reflection. Finally he spoke.

"You are far-sighted," he said.

"Or God is," replie