"She is with her father. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all about it. What did Garvin say? Is he going to be sensible?"
"There isn't so much to tell as there might be," Dick said, smothering a mighty prompting to tell the major fact first. "Garvin took it very sensibly, though a body could see that the lamplight was a good bit too strong for his eyes. He had to try three or four times before he could speak, and then all he could say was 'Thirds, Steve, thirds.'"
"'Thirds?' What did he mean by that?"
Bartrow hesitated for a moment, as a gunner who would make sure of the priming before he jerks the lanyard.
"Did it ever occur to you that any one else besides Garvin and Jeffard might be interested in the Midas?"
"Why, no!"
"It didn't to me. I don't know why, but I never thought of it, though I knew well enough that Jim never in all his life went prospecting on a grub-stake of his own providing. He didn't that summer three years ago when he drove the tunnel on the Midas."
Myra's lips were dry, and she had to moisten them to say, "Who was it, Dick?"
"Who should it be but our good old Uncle Steve? Of course, he'd forgotten all about it, and there he stood, wringing Garvin's hand and trying to congratulate him; and Jim hanging on to the back of his chair and saying, 'Thirds, Steve, I say thirds.' Garvin made him understand at last, and then the old man melted down into his chair and put his face in his hands. When he took it out again it was to look up and say, 'You're right, Jim; of course it's thirds,' and then he asked me where Jeffard was."
Myra's voice was unsteady, but she made shift to say what there was to be said; and Bartrow went on.