"This is my friend, Maurice Pemberton. He's from old Kentucky, too. You see," said Thad, hardly able to phrase a connected story in his excitement, "the folks he was livin' with broke up, and he was left with nary a home. Now, I'd been keepin' house on the shanty-boat old The.—I mean your father, give me when he was carried off to the hospital. Maurice he got a letter from his Uncle Ambrose, telling him to be in New Orleans in February, and he'd give him a berth on the big tramp steamer he's captain of. So Maurice and me we made up our minds to drift down South on our shanty-boat."
"And on your way you determined to stop over and see me. How good of you, Thad Tucker. Oh, I am so glad to see you! Now I can hear about my poor father's passing. All I know was contained in a short letter from the authorities of the hospital, saying he had been taken there and died. There was money enough found on his person to pay for burying him, but that was all. Come here, George, I want you to meet my father's young friend, Thad Tucker. You remember reading about him."
The thin man advanced with rather tottering steps, but a pleasant smile on his face. Maurice wondered whether what Kim. Stallings had said would prove true; and if this man, racked by malaria, could regain his health if he changed his home to higher ground.
"But you see I didn't know where you were all this time, only that it was somewhere down South. It was only the other day that, just by some luck, I happened to be hunting a lost trap, when I found something that told us where you lived," explained Thad, fumbling in his pocket.
"And," went on Maurice, taking up the story where his chum faltered, "as we were only a short distance up the river from Morehead, we made up our minds that we must meet with Bunny."
"And give her this," with which words Thad fished out the packet and thrust it hurriedly into the woman's hands.
"Oh, what is it?" she asked, beginning to tremble, not with fear, but delicious eagerness and anticipation.
"Something your dad wanted to get to you. He tried to tell me about it just when he was took, but I couldn't understand him. It was lyin' in a hole back of the lining of the boat, and just where he kept the few muskrat traps he owned," finished Thad.
Mrs. Stormway began to undo the string, though her hands trembled so she could hardly make much progress. Finally George himself had to take possession and cut the cord with a knife.
When he opened the little rusty covered diary and those beautiful yellowback government gold notes fluttered to the ground there was a tense silence. Both George and his wife could not believe their eyes. Perhaps, to tell the truth, they had never before seen even one yellowback note, and hardly understood what they were.