Silence, dismal and empty, lay over the little room for a long time. Then Hitt resumed. “The Express has not been self-supporting. Its growth has been steady, but it has depended for its deficit upon the revenue from my oil property. And so have we all. Ames ruined Madam Beaubien financially, as well as Miss Wall. He cleaned you out, Ned. And now, knowing that we all depended upon my oil wells, he has, I doubt not, completely removed that source of income.”
“But,” exclaimed Haynerd, “your property was insured, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Hitt, with a feeble attempt at a smile. “But with the proviso that dynamite should not be kept on the premises. You will note that dynamite wrecked the wells. That doubtless renders my policies void. But, even in case I should have a fighting chance with the insurance companies, don’t you think that they will be advised that I purposely set fire to the wells, in order to collect the insurance? I most certainly do. And I shall find myself with a big lawsuit on my hands, and with no funds to conduct the fight. Ames’s work, you know, 205 is always thorough, and the Express is already facing his suit for libel.”
“But you told us you were going to mortgage your property,” said Miss Wall.
“I stood ready to, should the Express require it. But, with its recent little boom, our paper did not seem to need that as yet,” he returned.
“Good God!” cried Haynerd. “We’re done for!”
“Yes, Ned, God is good!” It was Carmen who spoke.
Hitt turned quickly to the girl. “Can you say that, after all you have endured, Carmen?”
He looked at her for a moment, lost in wonder. “An outcast babe,” he murmured, “left on the banks of a great river far, far away; reared without knowledge of father or mother, and amid perils that hourly threatened to crush her; torn from her beloved ones and thrust out into an unknown and unsympathetic world; used as a stepping-stone to advance the low social ambitions of worldly women; blackened by the foulest slander, and ejected as an outcast by those who had fawned at her feet; still going about with her beautiful message of love, even though knowing that her childhood home is enveloped in the flames of war, and her dear ones scattered, perhaps lost; spurned from the door of the rich man whom she sought to save; carrying with her always the knowledge that the one upon whom her affections had centered had a son in distant Cartagena, and yet herself contributing to the support of the little lad; and now, this morning––” He stopped, for he remembered his promise.
“This morning,” she finished, “shielded by the One who is both Father and Mother to me.”