“Man, tell me what you have come here for, and at once.”
“I need fifty thousand dollars that I may live on the interest it will bring. I am getting along in years, and I wish to provide again for my son, whose fortune you squandered. Therefore, I wish him to marry an heiress.”
“And I tell you that I am little more than a beggar.”
“Oh, no; a man died in the upper mines some days ago, and he made his confession to me, and left a will bequeathing a million dollars he had dug out of the ground to you and your daughter——”
“What?”
“True. I ask for only fifty thousand, and you will still have two hundred thousand, as he left you a quarter of a million, and Mary the balance.”
“Do you mean this, Mat Kingsland?” and Judge Hale was very much excited.
“I do.”
“Why was a man worth that sum working in the mines?”