promised your dad I'd be here--with the coin--when you come back.
He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word
unless I was right here all the time. An' ol' man Packard, after I was
blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just
obeyed orders. Which, I've done, no matter what they was.

"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner? But to get this
tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do
for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out
somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me. When I come
to at the cabin an' firs' thing tried to get a chaw of tobacco I foun'
my pockets all turned wrong side out. It might have been Johnny Mills
himself; he didn't know about the gun bein' fooled with; it might have
been Blenham; it might have been Guy Little; it might have been
somebody else. But I've thought all along an' I pray God I was right
an' that some day I'll know, that it was Blenham."

He rose suddenly.

"Come ahead, Steve," he said, his voice matter of fact as of old.
"It's up to you to ride herd on your own simoleons now."

"You've left it in the same place? In the rock foundation-wall?"

"Yes. I couldn't find a safer place."

"And you haven't been back to it all these months?"

"Not until las' Saturday night. It was jus' six months then. I
figgered it out I'd make sure once every six months. I went in the
middle of the night an' made sure nobody followed me, Steve. Come
ahead."

Packard slipped his arm through Royce's and they went side by side.
The night was filled with stars; there was no moon. The wall, as they
came around the corner of the house, shone palely here and there where
a white surface glinted vaguely through the shadows.

"Nobody aroun', is there, Steve?" whispered Royce.

"Nobody," Packard assured him. "Where is it, Bill?"

Royce's hands, groping with the wall, rested at last upon a knob of
stone near the base of the foundation. He tugged; the stone, rudely
squared, came away, leaving a gaping hole. Royce thrust his hand in,
searched briefly, and in a moment brought out a flat wallet clutched
tightly.

"Yours, Steve!" he said then, a quick, palpitating note of pure joy in
his cry. "Blind as I was, I put it over for you! Here's ten thousan',
Steve. An' the chance to get ol' Number Ten back."

Packard was taking the wallet proffered him. Suddenly Royce jerked i