"What is that, father?"
"Why, this Tom Edwards brought me a letter from your grandfather's lawyer in Michigan. It tells me that the old man is dead, and that in his will he leaves all his property to you, but you are not to have a cent of it till you are twenty-one years of age——"
"Four years and a half, dear father!" cried the excited Sam.
"But," continued Mr. Willett, "the will further says that if you should die in the meantime that the property is to go to your grandfather's nephew, Frank Shirley."
"A bad, disreputable man to whom neither you nor mother would speak," said Sam.
"He is all that, I fear, and it troubles me to learn from Edwards that Frank Shirley has recently come into this land," said Mr. Willett.
[CHAPTER III.—SAM'S TRIALS BEGIN.]
While daylight was flooding the upper world next morning, and the shadows were lifting from the gloomy depths of the cañon, the modern cave dwellers ate their breakfast.
About three hundred yards above the caves the cañon widened out into a valley some three hundred yards in diameter. The bottom of this valley was covered with rich grass, and in it was a grove of cotton-wood trees whose bright verdure gave the place the appearance of a rich emerald gem in a mighty setting of granite.
In this valley the horses and pack mules were kept, and, as they had but little to do, they might be said to "live in clover."