While the rugged Westerner had been talking the story of the old hermit came back to her.
“What do you mean?” asked the other; “do you know where my brother is?”
“I’m not certain,” cried Peggy, “but the old hermit, Peter Bell, is he almost beyond a doubt.”
“My brother a hermit!” cried the wealthy mining man.
“If it is your brother,” put in Roy, “I hope for your sake it is. But his story tallies absolutely with yours. He told us that after he had missed you in the water he thought that you were drowned. Returning home he was shunned on every side, for the villagers accused him of having deserted you to save his own life.”
“My poor Peter,” breathed the miner.
“Miserable and made morose by the contempt he met with on every side he became a hermit and now lives in a hut near the town of Acatonick.”
“How long does it take to get there? I must lose no time in finding out,” exclaimed Jim Bell.
“You can get there in two or three hours from here if you can catch a train,” said Roy. “If you like I’ll phone for you and find out.”
“Say, boy, that would be mighty white of you. I tell you it hurts to think of poor Peter living all alone like that in poverty while I’ve been rich all these years. But it wasn’t for lack of trying to locate him, for I’ve advertised and had detectives searching every likely place.”