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Dead, sir, dead!" And Wallbridge shook his head merrily over the moral degradation of the business that chained his thoughts by day and his dreams by night. I joined Doddridge Knapp at the office and confided to him the fact that the cat was out of the bag. The King of the Street looked a little amused at the announcement. "Good Lord, Wilton! Where are your ears?" he said.
Harry dreamed himself back in his own chair, looking askance, and feeling sure his father was inwardly groaning over the absence of Jack, the eldest son. Then nine o'clock struck, and Fred and Mary began to put their books away in preparation for bed. "Wait a little, children," Mrs. Wallbridge said, serene in tone from her devotional reading. "Father wants that I should tell you something.
Hamilton, before the landlord had an opportunity to explain why he doubted the truth of the statement in regard to the Bible. "Harvey Barth hoped Mr. Wallbridge had not done anything wrong." "He hadn't done anything wrong," protested Stumpy, warmly. "Why should he change his name, then?" asked the ex-congressman. "For the fact that he did so appears to be well established."
The steward carefully secured his book again, and returned it to the box, while the passenger was lighting his pipe. "Rather a still time just now," said the steward, alluding to the weather, as Wallbridge puffed away at his pipe. "Dead calm," replied the passenger. "We shall not get in to-morrow at this rate."
"Gold isn't of much use to us just now," sighed Harvey, indifferently, as he glanced around him to ascertain if there were any means of escape to the high rocks above; but no man could climb the steep cliff beside him. "I worked two years in Cuba for this money, and I don't like to lose it," said Wallbridge. "But I don't mean to be drowned on account of it."
This suggestion was warmly applauded, and verbally seconded by half a dozen of the party. Leopold consented under this pressure, and read for a full hour, till he came to the afternoon of the day on which the brig was lost; in a word, till he came to what Harvey Barth had just written when Wallbridge came to the galley to light his pipe, as recorded in the first chapter of this story.
"When Harvey Barth left Wallbridge filling up the hole in which he had put the bag of gold," thought Leopold, "he must have walked towards the 'Hole in the Wall'" as the ravine was called by those who visited High Rock. "If he hadn't walked towards it, he wouldn't have found it.
Forty-five forty-seven fifty-five it was going up by leaps. I blessed the forethought that had suggested to me to put a limit on Wallbridge and stop the competition between my agents at fifty. The contest grew warmer. I could follow with difficulty the course of the proceedings, but I knew that Omega was bounding upward.
"Ah! how was that?" asked Wallbridge. "The fellow offered to show me round town, and, as I was kind of lonesome, I went with him. We called at a place to pay a bill he owed. He had a check for three hundred dollars; but the man he owed couldn't give him the change, so I lent him my hundred dollars, and took the check till he paid me.
I thought the thing was a bad sign, and I did not like to look at it, though I could not help doing so when the lightning flashed. I walked along to get out of the way of it, and passed the place where Wallbridge was at work. When I looked up at the cliff again, I could not see the coffin any more. There was the projecting rock, but on this side it did not look at all like a coffin.
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