In this man of fifty-eight there showed a strange boyishness. He was no longer gaunt and haggard. True, there was a haunting gentleness, a sadness, in his eyes, but it was the sadness of time past, not of the present. His look, his manner, had taken on a definite personality. No longer was he Thaddeus Roscius, the actor who fitted himself into the characters of other men; Montalembert was dead and here stood Thady Shea, man of his hands; one whose eyes met the world honestly and earnestly, with wide questioning, with a balanced poise and surety in self.
“My land!” pursued Mrs. Crump, meditatively. “When I think of the knock-kneed, blear-eyed critter I found layin’ up above the Bajada grade, I can’t hardly recognize ye, Thady! Ye look’s if ye’d got used to leaning on yourself. Want to come back to Number Sixteen with me?”
Shea frowned in perplexity. His eyes were serious. He had set forth all that had happened to him, all that he had done; Mrs. Crump had given him no blame, but in her eyes had shone pride and praise.
“I—I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “I’m looking for a purpose in life. I’m trying to find something definite. It’s so long since I’ve had anything definite! These twenty years, and more, there has seemed to be a knot gripped about my soul, somewhere—stifling me. I don’t seem to——”
“No need for all that,” said Mrs. Crump, impatiently. “You’re rich now.”
Shea’s eyes widened. “You mean—the mine?”
“No, I don’t. That mine is a humdinger, or will be once it gets started to paying. I got Lewis an’ Gilbert workin’ there now, they bein’ out o’ jail and shut o’ that old charge. No, Thady; I mean the ten thousand we screwed out o’ that skunk Mackintavers.”
Shea looked blank. “Ten thousand? I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Crump sighed in resignation, and set herself to explain.
“It was a right smart trick to indorse that check Dorales had made ready for ye—’bout the smartest thing I ever knowed ye to do, Thady. I takes that check and lights out and cashes it ’fore old Mackintavers heard what had happened to Dorales. The money’s in your name, down to the First National at Silver City; I ain’t touched it.”