Well, there is little more to tell you. I wired out west that we had old Mink and was able, I am glad to say, to inaugurate certain arrangements which resulted in his being placed in the Pinewoods Home for old people, of which my good friend Mr. John Temple was the founder. There he is living in patriarchal glory and his fifteen hundred dollars has gone to the institution. Whenever I drive past the beautiful place, almost hidden in the fragrant pines, I stop and see him, and sometimes I think his memory grows more clear. But he remembers things only in mass (if I may use such an expression) which is all that is to be hoped for, I suppose, considering his ninety-two years. I always take him tobacco for the pipe which I think is the only thing of my acquaintance older than he.
We found little June Sanderson to be another one of those unfortunates (of which Spiffy is the shining type) that the world does not understand. At least, the orphan asylum in Kingston did not understand her. I think that she never ceased to think of her forest home—and her beloved rattlesnakes, as Brent says. Even the knowledge that she was an heiress to the amount of fifteen hundred dollars did not seem to comfort her. She cried when she saw me, and cried more when I reminded her how she had “scared me about snakes,” and clung to me and did not want me to go.
So then we went to Aunt Martha’s. She was sitting on her little porch and seemed quite overwhelmed as we stopped before the house.
“Aunt Martha,” said I, “I blame you for some perplexities I have. I always knew that no good could ever come of the visit I made you, and now I am dickering with the authorities out west and visiting orphan asylums and dividing a fortune, and here are my two friends, Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong, and one of them knocked down a thief in the woods. The other nearly got killed by a rattlesnake and all I have as my personal swag in these adventures is a program of the Gayety Museum of the Bowery. I blame you for all this. You invited me up here. You stood in back of that rattlesnake. It was you, strictly speaking, it was you, who pushed my friend Brent Gaylong into a well! You are the accessory before the fact in a chain of harrowing and very dark adventures. I am not denouncing you for your part. Perhaps you didn’t realize what you were doing. But tell me this, so I can close up a very dark chapter in my career. Could you use (I spoke deliberately) a thoroughly first class little girl, as good as new, fully guaranteed? Just answer yes or no.”
Oh, well, to put an end to the nonsense, my Aunt Martha not only fell, but actually demanded, her share of the booty—“swag,” we told her she ought to call it. So I suppose I must consider her one of the gang of treasure-seekers, and like the pirate chief, she got the best part of the treasure. She is visiting me now, as I finish the record of these happenings, and chiding me for writing on this Christmas Eve, when I should be decorating the tree for her “swag,” which is just pretty little June Sanderson.
But I cannot stop till I have finished, for Tom and Brent are coming around to hear these last chapters and say whether I have told the plain truth. I have certainly tried to. And since they have been so much concerned with trees, I will let them try their hands at decorating while they “jolly” my poor old Aunt Martha as they always do, telling her that she was the cause of Brent’s mishap and Lawton’s thievery and the forest fire and all that. Well, it all sounds good in the home of a lonely bachelor. And my Aunt Martha will lay down her knitting, as she always does, and tell them that they should not make such charges against her in front of June, and try in her gentle way to show them how their reasoning and conclusions are defective....
THE END