“It might have been put there before—”
“It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins upon it.
There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell to wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of proudly showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was. barely escaping the suspicion of being a thief.
“If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t want anything which belongs to somebody else.”
“You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped the Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.”
They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash—that’s so! When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters of the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what that Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, my face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley.
I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed like a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there, and everywhere—but there’ll come a place in my tale—you’ll think of it if ever you get as far as that—where there’d be nothing to the story unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear with me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies after this confession.
Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that money again, of course.
But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me.
I licked him: