"You knew it from intuition—inward teaching."
"May I ask you, Hartman, why after you discovered that you had nothing to do with the death of Henry Lytton, you still determined to burden yourself with the support and education of his children—a duty that was first assumed by you as an atonement for an irreparable injury you supposed you had done them?"
"Why I still resolved to care for them after I learned that I had nothing to do with their great loss? Indeed I can not tell you. Perhaps—partly because I sympathized with them in a sorrow that was common to us all, in so far as we all suffered from the same cause; partly, I also think, because it was pleasant to have some one to live for and work for; partly because I was so grateful to find myself free from blood guiltiness that I wished to educate those children as a thank-offering to Heaven! It was also very pleasant to me to think of this boy at college and this girl at school, and to hope that some day they might come to look upon me with affection instead of with horror. And then I took so much pride in talking to my brother miners about my son at the University and my daughter at the Academy! And then, again, your letters—every one of them telling of the progress my children made and the credit they were doing me. I tell you, sir, all this was a great comfort to me, and made me feel at home in this strange, lonesome world," said the exile, warmly.
"Hartman, you have a noble soul! You must have made a very great pecuniary sacrifice for the sake of these young people," said the minister, earnestly.
"No, sir; no sacrifice at all. That was the strangest part of it; for it seemed to me the more I gave the more I had."
"How was that?"
"I don't know how it was, sir; but such was the fact. But I will tell you what I do know."
"Yes, tell me, Hartman."
"You may remember, Mr. Lyle, that when I told you I was going back to California I explained to you that I knew a place where I felt sure money was to be made."
"Yes, I remember."