They started toward the door. At a gesture from Mr. Lawton, Tippoo stepped in front of the door and drew the revolver from his sash. The Denver man fell back in trepidation.
"You'll start north very soon," said Mr. Lawton keenly, "and when you go you'll take Sercomb with you. First, however, there is something to be told, and you'll wait to hear it.
"Ever since I came to America I have had Ralph and Dick in mind. Either I was to divide my property between them, or else I was to cut off one and leave all to the other. In some respects I am a particular man. What property I have collected I want to fall into hands that will do the most good with it. With that end in view I have tried to make a study of Ralph and Dick.
"It was easy for me to study Ralph. Whenever I asked him to come here and see me, he came; and he remained, as a rule, until I asked him to go. He had ways about him which I did not like, but I feared that was merely a prejudice. I like the youth who is open and aboveboard, who says what he means and who is frank and fearless. Ralph did not seem to be that.
"Dick I never could get to come to me." Mr. Lawton lifted his hand and rested it on Ferral's shoulder. "I couldn't understand this, for by making a little of me he had everything to gain. He was serving his king afloat—I liked that—but I felt that he might take a little time off for a visit, every two or three years, with the forlorn old man 'way off here in the American wilds.
"When Dick wrote me from Texas, I conceived a plan. By this plan I hoped to bring both my nephews here, and to find out, beyond all cavil, just which was the better entitled to what I shall some day leave.
"With the Lamy lawyer to help, the little conspiracy was hatched. Identically the same letters were sent to Ralph and Dick, each stating that I was tired of living alone, that I was going to get out of the way, and that wherever I was found my will would be found with me."
A grim smile hovered about the bristling gray mustache of the old man.
"I did not say what the will was," he went on, "but I will remark here that it was purely the mental process by which I intended to judge which of my nephews was the more worthy.