The train pulled into the station, and the Westerner fairly threw himself aboard. Mr. Hitter rushed off to look after some baggage, and Jim Nestor and the boys followed their excited friend.
“What’s it all about?” asked Bob, much puzzled.
“Give it up,” replied Jerry. “Maybe that’s one of the poor relations he was telling about, who want him to support them. He’ll tell us in the train, I guess. Come on, Professor!”
“Wait! Wait!” cried the stout lady; but with a wave of his hand Mr. Brill disappeared into the smoker.
The motor boys climbed up the steps of the coach. Professor Snodgrass, making a grab for a rare bug he saw at the last moment, followed. The big woman attempted to board the train, but it was too late, and as it pulled out of the station she was last seen running after the cars, while, in the smoker, Mr. Brill was heard to say with much fervor:
“Oh what a lucky escape!”
“What was it all about?” asked Jerry, when they were all together in the parlor car where they had seats, Mr. Brill having moved forward. “Was she one of your relations?”
“She was,” answered the miner, “and one of the worst. She called herself my aunt, but she was more like a forty-second cousin. For years I almost supported her and her family. Her husband won’t work—he thinks he’s got heart disease. I gave her what I could spare, and more too, just as I did a whole lot of others who thought because I was a gold miner, that I was rich. But I wasn’t.
“How she found out I was in the East I don’t know, but some of the poor relations out West must have sent word that I had come on. Then she traced me—though I don’t know how—and I suppose she came for money. But I got away—thank goodness! I got away. If she had found me earlier she’d have made life miserable for me. I had—well, you know what,” he added, in a whisper, referring to the sixty nuggets of gold. “It had to be kept quiet, and that’s why I didn’t want to get the sheriff and a posse to recover my stuff. Word would have gotten out that I had it and then—well, I wouldn’t have had it, that’s all.”
“I guess you’re safe now,” remarked Ned, with a smile, as he recalled the scene of excitement in the depot.