"Poor Seth Upham!" he said at last. "Well, there's nothing we can do for him now. And as for Neil Gleazen, he's better dead than back in Topham, for here he'd hang as sure as preaching. Jed Matthews, they say, never moved a muscle after Neil hit him on the head. But as for you, Joe, you're no penniless wanderer."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"There was all of fifteen thousand dollars on board the brig."
"What makes you think that?"
"Didn't I help Seth store it in his trunk? 'You're simple, Sim, and honest,' he says to me. 'I'll not have another soul besides you know this, but you're as honest as you are simple,' Them's the words he said, and I was that proud of 'em that I've treasured 'em ever since."
I thought of the papers and bags we had stored in the wagon that night when we fled from Topham.
"He hid it well," I replied. "But even if he had not hidden it so well, I fear that it would nevertheless be at the bottom of the La Plata River, just as it now is, with the brig, and all the goods that were on board her, and many men that sailed in her, good and bad alike."
"But that is not all."
"Not all? What do you mean?"
"Seth Upham left money in the bank, and I've seen his will with my own eyes. 'Twas found in the safe after we left town, and turned over to Judge Fuller."