hash and having a roll down at the Good Cheer! Do you think I didn't spy on ye and find that out? Oh, you long-eared jackass-rabbit!”
He laughed until the tears came into his eyes, and Uncle Billy laughed too, albeit until the laugh on his face became quite fixed, and he was fain to bury his head in his handkerchief.
“And yet,” said Uncle Jim, with a deep breath, “gosh! I was frighted—jest for a minit! I thought, mebbe, you HAD made a big strike—when I got your first letter—and I made up my mind what I'd do! And then I remembered you was jest that kind of an open sluice that couldn't keep anythin' to yourself, and you'd have been sure to have yelled it out to ME the first thing. So I waited. And I found you out, you old sinner!” He reached forward and dug Uncle Billy in the ribs.
“What WOULD you hev done?” said Uncle Billy, after an hysterical collapse.
Uncle Jim's face grew grave again. “I'd hev—I'd—hev cl'ared out! Out er 'Frisco! out er Californy! out er Ameriky! I couldn't have stud it! Don't think I would hev begrudged ye yer luck! No man would have been gladder than me.” He leaned forward again, and laid his hand caressingly upon his partner's arm—“Don't think I'd hev wanted to take a penny of it—but I—thar! I COULDN'T hev stood up under it! To hev had YOU, you that I left behind, comin' down here rollin' in wealth and new partners and friends, and arrive upon me—and this shanty—and”—he threw towards the corner of the room a terrible gesture, none the less terrible that it was illogical and inconsequent to all that had gone before—“and—and—THAT BROOM!”
There was a dead silence in the room. With it Uncle Billy seemed to feel himself again transported to the homely cabin at Cedar Camp and that fateful night, with his partner's strange, determined face before him as then. He even fancied that he heard the roaring of the pines without, and did not know that it was the distant sea.
But after a minute Uncle Jim resumed:—
“Of course you've made a little raise somehow, or you wouldn't be here?”
“Yes,” said Uncle Billy eagerly. “Yes! I've got”—He stopped and stammered. “I've got—a—few hundreds.”
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