"Do you realize now what your position is in regard to your little property in California?" asked Mr. Pratt at last. He turned to Gerald and looked at him with an amused smile as he put the question.
"I seem to care for nothing except that the intolerable weight has gone, which has crushed me down for ten interminable years," was the reply, "but I expect I shall take the first opportunity of getting rid of anything that is mine in Wild Goat Gully. I never want to see the place again."
"You won't have many offers," said Mr. Pratt, with a knowing nod.
"Not worth anything, I suppose," answered Gerald. "Well, I thought as much, only I don't seem to care."
"There are not a dozen men in the world who could bid for it," returned Mr. Pratt. "Do you understand, Mr. Barker, that you are now the Silver King?"
It was indeed with feelings of astonishment that Gerald and Madelaine listened to the account of the Good Hope mine, with that tell-tale orange streak across its rocky wall, and learned that its rich treasures were indisputably their own.
Not till a week later were they able to grasp the reality of what it all meant, when they were called to the dying bed of the man who had robbed them not only of their heritage but of their peace. Broken and penitent, Thomas Field made full confession of his sin, praying those he had injured to forgive him for the wrong which he had done.
It was Gerald Barker who supported the sick man's head in that last dread struggle for breath, and Madelaine who closed his eyes as he passed away from the world he had so much misused.
"You promised you would be good to my boy," he gasped a few minutes before the end. "He is blameless, though he must suffer for his father's evil deeds, poor little chap."
"He is going to be our boy now," answered Madelaine, putting her arm round the sobbing child. "Robin and he will be brothers in everything, and Julius shall share with him both our home and our love."