"Now, look yer, Billy boy!" said Uncle Jim; "I got suthin' to say to ye--and I might as well clear it off my mind at once, and then we can start fair agin. Now," he went on, with a half laugh, "wasn't it enough for _me_ to go on pretendin' I was rich and doing a big business, and gettin' up that lock-box dodge so as ye couldn't find out whar I hung out and what I was doin'--wasn't it enough for me to go on with all this play-actin', but _you_, you long-legged or'nary cuss! must get up and go to lyin' and play-acting too!" "_Me_ play-actin'? _Me_ lyin'?" gasped Uncle Billy. Uncle Jim leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Do you think you could fool _me_? Do you think I didn't see through your little game o' going to that swell Oriental, jest as if ye'd made a big strike--and all the while ye wasn't sleepin' 'or eatin' there, but jest wrastlin' yer hash and having a roll down at the Good Cheer! Do you think I didn't spy on ye and find that out? Oh, you long-eared jackass-rabbit!" He laughed until the tears came into his eyes, and Uncle Billy laughed too, albeit until the laugh on his face became quite fixed, and he was fain to bury his head in his handkerchief. "And yet," said Uncle Jim, with a deep breath, "gosh! I was frightened--jest for a minit! I thought, mebbe, you _had_ made a big strike--when I got your first letter--and I made up my mind what I'd do! And then I remembered you was jest that kind of an open sluice that couldn't keep anythin' to yourself, and you'd have been sure to have yelled it out to _me_ the first thing. So I waited. And I found you out, you old sinner!" He reached forward and dug Uncle Billy in the ribs. "What _would_ you hev done?" said Uncle Billy, after an hysterical collapse. Uncle Jim's face grew grave again. "I'd hev--I'd--hev cl'ared out! Out er 'Frisco! out er Californy! out er Ameriky! I couldn't have stud it! Don't think I would hev begrudged ye yer luck! No man would have been gladder than me." He leaned forward again, and laid his hand caressingly upon his partner's arm--"Don't think I'd hev wanted to take a penny of it--but I--thar! I _couldn't_ hev stood up under it! To hev had _you_, you, you that I left behind, comin' down here rollin' in wealth and new partners and friends, and arrive upon me--and this shonty--and"--he threw towards the corner of the room a terrible gesture, none the less terrible that it was illogical and inconsequent, to all that had gone before--"and--and--_that broom_!" There was a dead silence in the room. With it Uncle Billy seemed to feel himself again transported to the homely cabin at Cedar Camp and that fateful night, with his partner's strange, determined face before him as then. He even fancied that he heard the roaring of the pines without, and did not know that it was the distant sea. But after a minute Uncle Jim resumed:-- "Of course you've made a little raise somehow, or you wouldn't be here?"