"Is it true all this they are saying about you, Bill?" Symonds asked.
"Well, it is true enough that I was advertised for, and went down to Frisco to see a man there about it. Of course it is all nonsense as to what they are saying about the value of it. It is some family property that might have come to me long ago if I hadn't kicked over the traces; but I am not going to trouble about it. I shall have all the bother and expense of going to England to prove who I am, and I wouldn't do it if it were ten times as much."
"Come and have a glass of cham, Bill. My own story is a good deal like yours. I daresay I might be master of a good estate in the old country now, if I hadn't gone a mucker."
"It is too early to drink," Will said; "if I did drink it would be just a cocktail. The champagne you get is poison."
"Just as you like. By the way, if I can be of any use to you let me know. It is an expensive run home to England from here, and if you have need for a thousand dollars, I could let you have them. I have had a good run of luck this last six months. It would be a business transaction, you know, and you could pay me a couple of hundred for the use of it. It is of no use losing a good thing for the want of funds."
"Thank you, Symonds. I have enough to take me home if I have to go; but I am very much obliged for the offer all the same."
"It is business," the other said carelessly, "and there are no thanks due. If you change your mind let me know; mind I owe you a cocktail next time we meet in the saloon."
The gambler went on. Will Tunstall looked after him with a little wonder at the offer he had made. "It is a good-natured thing to offer, for, of course, if I went to England he could not make anything out of me beyond the interest of the money, and he would get more than that putting it on house property in Frisco. He is a queer card, and would look more at home in New York than in Cedar Gulch!"
The gambler's dress, indeed, was out of place with the surroundings. Like most of his class he dressed with scrupulous neatness; his clothes were well made, and fitted him; he wore a white shirt, the only one in the camp, and abstained from the diamond studs and rings, and heavy gold watch-chain that was generally affected by professional gamblers. He was tall, as tall as Tunstall himself, though not so broad or so strongly built; but his figure was well knit, there was in his walk and action an air of lightness and activity, and he had more than once shown that he possessed an altogether unusual amount of muscular strength.
"It is a pity that the fellow is what he is," Will Tunstall said when he turned away; "what a soldier he would have made, with his strength, and pluck, and wonderful coolness!"
This little conversation was followed by several others. Somehow or other they met more frequently than they had done before, and one evening, when there was no play in the saloon, Symonds asked him to come in and have a chat with him in his private room at the hotel. For some time they chatted on different subjects. Symonds had brought out a box of superb cigars, and a bottle of such claret as Will Tunstall had not drunk for years, saying carelessly as he did so, "I always carry my own tipple about with me. It would ruin my nerves to drink the poison they keep at these places."
After a time he brought the subject round to the legacy. "I have been thinking over what you said about not going back, and I think you are wrong, if you don't mind my saying so. What have you got to look forward to here? Toil and slave year after year, without ever getting a step further, living all the time a life harder than that of the poorest labourer at home. It is well enough now, I suppose. You are seven or eight and thirty, just about my own age; in another ten years you will be sorry you let the chance slip. Of course it is different with me. As far as money goes, I could give it up now, but I cannot go back again. Men don't take to my sort of life," he said with some bitterness, "unless they have got a pretty bad record behind them; but I shall give it up before very long, unless I am wiped out first. Then I'll go and settle in South America, or some place of that sort, buy an estate, and set up as a rich and virtuous Englishman whose own climate doesn't agree with him."
Then he carelessly changed the subject again, but it was reverted to once or twice in the course of the evening, and before Will left he had said enough to enable his companion to gather a fair estimate of the value of the property, and the share he was likely to have of it.
The new claim turned out fairly well, improving somewhat in depth, and yielding a good though not an extraordinary profit to the partners. Some four months after Will Tunstall had been down to San Francisco, he received a bulky letter from the attorney there. It contained an abstract of his brother's will. This left him half the property, with a statement saying that he considered it to be his brother's by right, and inclosed with it was a copy of a letter written a few days before his death. It ran as follows: —
"My dear Will, – You have wandered about long enough. It is high time for you to come back to the old place that you ought never to have left. I shall not see you again, for I have long been suffering from heart-disease, and the doctors tell me the end may come any day. I have had the opinion of some of the best authorities, and they all say that, thanks to some peculiar wording in the will, which I don't understand in the slightest, the prohibition to divide with you is only binding during my lifetime, and that nothing is said that restricts my right to leave it as I please. I don't suppose the contingency of your surviving me ever entered into our father's mind, and probably he thought that you would never be heard of again. However, you see it has turned out otherwise. You have wandered and roughed it, and gone through dangers of all sorts, and are still, you tell me, strong and healthy. I have lived quietly and comfortably with every luxury, and without a day's trouble, save my terrible grief when my wife died, and the ever-constant regret that you were not here beside me; yet I am dying, but that enables me at last to redress to some extent the cruel wrong you have suffered.
"I have left you half the estate, and it makes me happy to think that you will come back again to it. I have appointed you sole guardian of my boy. He is only twelve years old, and I want you to be a father to him. The estate is large enough for you both, and I hope that you may, on your return, marry, and be happy here; if not, I suppose it will all go to him at your death. In any case, I pray you to come home, for the boy's sake, and for your own. It is my last request, and I hope and believe that you will grant it. You were always good to me when we were boys together, and I feel sure that you will well supply my place to Hugh. God bless you, old fellow! Your affectionate brother,
With these documents was a letter from the solicitors to the family saying that they had heard from their agents at San Francisco that he had presented himself in answer to their advertisement, and had shown them the letters of the late Mr. Edgar Tunstall. They therefore forwarded him copies of the will, and of Mr. Tunstall's letter, and begged him to return home without delay, as his presence was urgently required. They assumed, of course, that they were writing to Mr. William Tunstall, and that when he arrived he would have no difficulty whatever in proving his identity.
"I think I must go, boys," he said as, after reading his brother's letter three or four times, he folded the papers up, and put them in his pocket. "My brother has made me guardian of his boy, and puts it so strongly that I think I must go over for a bit. I don't suppose I shall have to stop; although the lawyers say that I am urgently required there; but, mind, I mean to do just what I said. I shall take a thousand pounds or so, and renounce the rest. A nice figure I should make setting up at home as a big land-owner. I should be perfectly miserable there. No, you take my word for it, I shall be back here in six months at the outside. I shall get a joint guardian appointed to the boy; the clergyman of the place, or some one who is better fitted to see after his education and bringing up than I am. When he gets to seventeen or eighteen, and a staunch friend who knows the world pretty well may be really of use to him, I shall go over and take him on his travels for two or three years. Bring him out here a bit, perhaps. However, that is in the distance. I am going now for a few months; then you will see me back here. I wish I wasn't going; it is a horrible nuisance, but I don't see that I can get out of it."
"Certainly you cannot, Bill; it is your plain duty. We don't go by duty much in these diggings, and it will be pleasant to see somebody do a thing that