“Yes!” she replied, excitedly. “Can you tell me of him?”
“I can.”
“Thank God for that! Where is he now?”
“That I cannot say, but I hope alive and well,” replied Frank. “He was with me until very recently.”
“I am so glad to know that he is then alive!” said Mabel Dane, “for I heard that he was sick with a fever in this desolate clime, and I came all the way from New York to find him, and to nurse him back to life and happiness.”
“He has not forgotten you,” said Frank. “Indeed, he had hoped to return to you with his fortune made. It was his by right of discovery, but this brigand villain Muriel has stolen it away.”
“Ah, poor fellow!” cried she; “but he shall worry no more about the fortune. I am rich now in my own right. Shortly after Royal went away to look for his fortune, my father got word from his brother in Australia that an uncle had died and left them a round million each. I was anxious to go in quest of Royal at once. Hearing that he was sick father and I came here in search of him.
“We journeyed on negro-back and on mules, on foot and every way, until in a mountain pass, not fifty miles from here, Red Muriel captured us and brought us here to be held for ransom.”
“The villain!”
“He is that. Well, father has sent for the five thousand dollars required by the wretch, and we will soon be free.”