“I don't blame you,” said the old man. “I've never understood it yet.”
“I was to marry Margaret. I love her yet,” he added simply. “When I found she was false I went out—and—well, you know the rest.”
He took a turn around the room, picked up one of little Jack's shoes, and cried over it.
“So I married his mother—little Jack's mother, a mountain lass that hid me and befriended me. She died when the boy was born. His granny kep' him while I was on my raids—nobody knowed it was my son. His granny died two years ago. This has been our home ever sence, an' not once, sence little Jack has been with me, have I done a wrong deed. Often an' often we've slipt up to hear you preach—what you've said went home to me.”
“Jack,” said the old man suddenly aroused—“was that you—was it you been puttin' them twenty dollar gol' pieces in the church Bible—between the leds, ever' month for the las' two years? By it I've kep' up the po' of Cottontown. I've puzzled an' wonder'd—I've thought of a dozen fo'ks—but I sed nothin'—was it you?”
The outlaw smiled: “It come from the rich an' it went to the po'. Come,” he said—“that's somethin' we must settle.”
He took up the lantern and led the way into the other room. Under a ledge of rocks, securely hid, sat, in rows, half a dozen common water buckets, made of red cedar, with tops fitting securely on them.
The outlaw spread a blanket on the sand, then knelt and, taking up a bucket, removed the top and poured out its contents on the blanket. They chuckled and rolled and tumbled over each other, the yellow eagles and half eagles, like thoroughbred colts turned out in the paddocks for a romp.
The old man's knees shook under him. He trembled so that he had to sit down on the blanket. Then he ran his hand through them—his fingers open, letting the coins fall through playfully.
Never before had he seen so much gold. Poor as he was and had ever been—much and often as he had suffered—he and his, for the necessities of life, even, knowing its value and the use he might make of it, it thrilled him with a strange, nervous longing—a childish curiosity to handle it and play with it.