"David, what does this mean? Why have you kept this gold in a place like that?"
"Why, there wasn't anything else to do with it," answered the boy perplexedly. "I hadn't any use for it, you know, and father said to keep it till I needed it."
"'Hadn't any use for it'!" blustered Larson from the doorway. "Jiminy! Now, ain't that jest like that boy?"
But David hurried on with his explanation.
"We never used to use them—father and I—except to buy things to eat and wear; and down here YOU give me those, you know."
"Gorry!" interjected Perry Larson. "Do you reckon, boy, that Mr. Holly himself was give them things he gives ter you?"
The boy turned sharply, a startled question in his eyes.
"What do you mean? Do you mean that—" His face changed suddenly. His cheeks turned a shamed red. "Why, he did—he did have to buy them, of course, just as father did. And I never even thought of it before! Then, it's yours, anyway—it belongs to you," he argued, turning to Farmer Holly, and shoving the gold nearer to his hands. "There isn't enough, maybe—but 't will help!"
"They're ten-dollar gold pieces, sir," spoke up Larson importantly; "an' there's a hundred an' six of them. That's jest one thousand an' sixty dollars, as I make it."
Simeon Holly, self-controlled man that he was, almost leaped from his chair.