“It’s just come to me!” he said eagerly. “Listen——”
And they soon saw that “it” had “come to him” in full.
CHAPTER XVI
PART OF THE SECRET
“Men in tropical places don’t ask each other questions about their business any more than the cowmen do on the range,” Jack began. “That fellow, Mort, was like all of us. He didn’t say much when he was himself; but when he got——”
“Happy!” suggested Tom.
“Well,” Jack grinned, “I wouldn’t call it that. Instead of being happy, he got to weeping, and wailing and crying on my shoulder. It was thinking about that and what he said that made me remember.”
They settled themselves, under the hot afternoon sun, to listen.
“It was after two days and nights,” Jack went on, “Mort was weeping about having so much money and then not having any and getting so he had to work as a sailor, and get wrecked in this forsaken hole.”
“You remember it all clearly, at last!” commented Mr. Gray.
“Yes, I do,” Jack nodded. “Mort told me, then, he had been in Mexico and I recall that now. He said, between crying and looking for sympathy, what a shame it was that he had only took—let me see, how did he put it?——”