“I know, Neddy, I know. It just breaks my heart to have to decline it, but the fact of the matter is, I think you'd better give that job to your brother after all. At any rate, I'm not going to take it.”
“Why?” the amazed Jerome demanded. “Johnny, you're crazy in the head. Of course you'll take it.”
For answer Webster handed his friend the letter he had just received.
“Read that, old horse, and see if you can't work up a circulation,” he suggested.
Jerome adjusted his spectacles and read:
Calle de Concordia 19, Buenaventura,
Sobrante, C. A.
Dear John:
I would address you as “dear friend John,” did I but possess sufficient courage. In my heart of hearts you are still that, but after three years of silence, due to my stupidity and hardness of heart, it is, perhaps, better to make haste slowly.
To begin, I should like to be forgiven, on the broad general grounds that I am most almighty sorry for what I went and done! Am I forgiven? I seem to see your friendly old face and hear you answer “Aye,” and with this load off my chest at last I believe I feel better already.
I did not know until very recently what had become of you, and that that wretched Cripple Creek business had been cleared up at last. I met a steam-shovel man a month or two ago on the Canal. He used to be a machine-man in the Portland mine, and he told me the whole story.
Jack, you poor, deluded old piece of white meat, do you think for a moment that I held against you your testimony for the operators in Cripple Creek? You will never know how badly it broke me up when that Canal digger sprung his story of how you went the limit for my measly reputation after I had quit the company in disgrace. Still, it was not that which hurt me particularly. I thought you believed the charges and that you testified in a firm belief that I was the guilty man, as all of the circumstantial evidence seemed to indicate. I thought this for three long, meagre years, old friend, and I'm sorry. After that, I suppose there isn't
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