“We may well imagine the agony of the unhappy husband and father when he learned that his wife and children had been so suddenly swept into eternity. Indeed, he wrote one pitiful letter to his old friend that would surely bring tears to the eyes of any honest man. It is here,” touching a bundle of papers with a gesture almost tender. “But Jordan—Jordan the fiend, the worse than murderer—only chuckled gleefully at the success of his plot. John Carden would never return to America now, and Mrs. Carden would never be able to tell her husband of the new steel mills that had been started in Bingham. Jordan was triumphant, and began to accumulate the fortune which he had so cleverly arranged to steal from his friend.
“He made two mistakes, however. One was that he forget that there is an Almighty God watching over us all. The other was that he foolishly intrusted all the incriminating papers in his conspiracy to a hollow in an oak tree.”
“It’s false!” shouted Jordan, now fully beside himself and rising to shake an impotent and trembling fist in Mr. Williams’s face. “It’s false, and I can prove it. John Carden is dead, and the money is all mine! John Carden is dead, and——”
“John Carden is alive!” cried a clear voice, as the door burst open to admit the speaker. And then John Carden himself strode into the room, followed by his son Will.
“Hurrah!” shouted the doctor, and springing to his feet he dashed at his old friend and actually embraced him in the exuberance of his joy. Chester D. Williams had never seen John Carden before; but the men were not strangers, for all that, since Will had told his father all the details of the great manufacturer’s history, and never wearied singing his praises. So in a moment the two men had clasped hands, the beginning of a friendship long to continue.
Jordan, shrinking back against the wall in abject terror at this denouement, made a stealthy effort to escape through the open door, but was halted by the burly form of the commercial traveller in the checked suit, who suddenly occupied the doorway.
“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s no hurry,” said the fellow, with a grin. “Better stay and see the fun. It’s going to be hot in a minute.”
Then he retreated and closed the door behind him, and Jordan turned to confront the blazing eyes and sternly set features of the man he had so bitterly wronged.