“Not being able to find the right cavern, I suppose?” laughed Frank.
“Oh, they found the right cavern, all right, but that helped them not a bit.”
“What do you mean?”
Frank sprang to his feet excitedly, and the others gathered around, anticipating the next sentence. There had been no gold in the cavern! Frank’s father had been mistaken! Was that what John was about to say? Had all this excitement, all these dreams of wealth, come to such a dreary ending?
“There was no gold there for them to get!” John said.
Frank sank back with a sigh.
“That is a corker!” he said. “No gold there?”
“For the reason,” continued John, with a laugh, “that I had taken it out and shipped it away!”
Clay was about to ask the speaker if he considered it a good joke to rob a fellow like that and then laugh over it, but there was so much humor in John’s eyes that he hesitated to put the impertinent, accusing and degrading question.
Frank arose wearily and walked away, but John caught him by the arm and turned him back.