With that Hugh swung Gus around so that he faced the one upon the blankets, and at the same instant exclaimed:
“Because he’s your own brother, Sam, the little Gus you left at home when you went away after quarreling with your father! He’s been sent up here through the love your mother still bears you, to try for the last time to bring you to your senses, and fetch you to your knees asking pardon. Now you know why we’re in the old logging camp, Sam. Your mother learned that you were here; she would have come herself if she had been able; but in her place she sent a messenger in Gus.”
The young fellow on the blankets stared at Gus as though he could hardly believe his ears and eyes. The bitter thoughts that had held possession of his mind all these years struggled desperately to keep possession of his soul, but the hour had come when their knell was to strike.
He thrust out and seized the eager hand of his younger brother, which he pressed to his lips. Nor was Hugh at all surprised to see him burst into tears, as though the long-pent-up emotions had suddenly swept everything before them.
“Oh! what wouldn’t I give to be able to see her again!” he cried. “No fellow ever had a better mother than she always was to me; and how basely I treated her. I’ve been sorry so many times, but in shame I didn’t dare write to her. And so it’s to my own brother Gus I owe my life, do I? Well, it was worth coming all the way from the West to learn that they do still think of me at home—some of them.”
He would not let go of the hand he had taken. Hugh and the others were intensely interested in everything that was said, though the scout master had a little suspicion that it might not be the best thing they could do to let Sam excite himself so much in his present weakened condition.
“Oh! no danger of his feeling it,” Arthur told him when he mentioned something of his fears in this respect. “He’s buoyed up now by a new hope that’s going to do more toward bringing him around than all the cordials or broths he could take. See how the color’s come to his face, will you? And his eyes fairly sparkle. Joy seldom kills, you must know, Hugh. Sam is already beginning to get glimpses of a new life. It’s all right, and don’t stop Gus from talking all he wants to about home and mother. He knows what he was sent up here to do. It’s all for a purpose.”
“We’d about given up hope of hearing from you again, Sam,” Gus was saying. “It must have been all of three years since you wrote that last letter in which you said you meant to try your luck up in Alaska. Day after day, and month after month, mother would watch for the mails until even her dear heart grew sick with the suspense. Why didn’t you let her hear from you once in months, Sam?”
“I was a wretch not to do it,” admitted the other, contritely; “but I had vowed I wouldn’t let any of the home folks hear from me again until I had won out, conquered my evil nature, and actually done something to show father I wasn’t the good-for-nothing he called me. So I made my way to the mines up in Alaska, and began work at the bottom. In a year I bought a piece of ground of my own, a mine that was supposed to be played out. Then later on I struck it rich, and began to hug myself in thinking how I would appear before you all a wealthy man. Then there came a claimant for my property. The court decided against me, and I lost all I had believed I owned. I fell sick after that, and it was an uphill fight; finally I gave it all up and came back to the States as poorly off as I started.”
Sam looked very dejected when he reached this point in his brief story. Gus, however, seemed to see the circumstance in a different light.