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"We're really beholden to HER for 'em. If she hadn't thought of having them " "For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them would you?" said Slinn, slowly, gazing at the fire. "No," said Mulrady, dubiously.
The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity, remained impassive. "You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?" Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn. He was under the impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the "Record." "Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn. "I'm taking his place." "Bueno! To be shot too? I trust not."
One morning, after office hours, Slinn, who had been watching the careworn face of his employer, suddenly rose and limped to his side. "We promised each other," he said, in a voice trembling with emotion; "never to allude to our talk of Christmas Eve again unless we had other proofs of what I told you then. We have none; I don't believe we'll ever have any more.
The treasure-finder advanced a few steps on his side, and then stopped irresolutely. "Hollo, Slinn!" said the neighbor, confidently. "Hollo, Masters," responded Slinn, faintly. From the sound of the two voices a stranger might have mistaken their relative condition. "What in thunder are you mooning about for? What's up?"
It was Masters' pick you found! I know it now!" "And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in excitement. "And YOUR strike?" "Is still there!" The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn had darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme discovery he regained the full control of his mind and body.
The narrow passage was quite dark, but from his knowledge of the house he knew the "lean-to" was next to the kitchen, and, passing through the dining-room into it, he opened the door of the little room from which the light proceeded. It came from a single candle on a small table, and beside it, with his eyes moodily fixed on the dying embers of the fire, sat old Slinn.
The young man looked at Slinn with quietly persistent significance. "You can talk all the same," said Mulrady, accepting the significance. "He's my private secretary." "It seems that for that reason we might choose another moment for our conversation," returned Don Caesar, haughtily. "Do I understand you cannot see me now?"
That darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh, "because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man! Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for my Christmas dinner."
Stop, let's spread them out." He dragged the table to the middle of the floor, and piled the provisions upon it. They certainly were not deficient in quality or quantity. "Now, Slinn, wade in." "I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into a chair before the fire. "No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to do about this time.
"Let me get more help and proper tools." "I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn, struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason! Stand aside!" He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the yawning blackness.
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