"Or more," she suggested. "You may have made a hard bargain with him, but you wiped that out later."
"That's just what I didn't do. Don't think my conscience is troubling me. I'm not such a mush-brained fool. If it had not been for you I would never have thought of it again. But you are his daughter. What I cheated him out of belongs to you—and you are my friend."
"Don't use that word about what you did, please. He wasn't a child. If you got the best of him in a bargain, I don't think father would think of it that way."
The difficulty was that he could not tell her the truth about her father's weakness for drink and how he had played upon it. He bridged all explanations and passed to the thing he meant to do in reparation.
"The money I cleaned up from that claim belongs to you, Miss O'Neill. You will oblige me by taking it."
From his pocket he took a folded paper and handed it to her. Sheba opened it doubtfully. The paper contained a typewritten statement and to it was attached a check by means of a clip. The check was made out to her and signed by Colby Macdonald. The amount it called for was one hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-one dollars.
"Oh, I couldn't take this, Mr. Macdonald—I couldn't. It doesn't belong to me," she cried.
"It belongs to you—and you're going to take it."
"I wouldn't know what to do with so much."