"I always said," the savior went on, with a chuckle,--"in fact, I began to say it before I got into knickerbockers,--that I intended to be the father of a family numbering at least a 'baker's dozzen.' I believe I had a vague notion that by means of superabundance of paternity I could atone to myself for my lack of other family ties. I was always so beastly alone. Yet no one--Miles Madigan least of all--saw the pathos of my lot. 'He's young and unencumbered,' he said of me toward the last when he was reminded of how little he had left for me. 'He'll get along. Besides, there's that wildcat mine out in the States; I'm leaving him that.'" Madigan's pipe fell to the floor; he had been filling it for his after-dinner smoke. "You've got the Tomboy!" he exclaimed. "That interests you?" Morgan asked. Kate, who picked up the pipe and handed it to her father, as she passed, the last of the line of young Madigans on the way out, saw how Francis Madigan's hand shook. Mechanically she paused and listened. "I--I was swindled out of my share of that mine," he said harshly. "Miles Madigan knew that in fairness half of it was mine. I found it. I worked for it. I put aside all other opportunities to devote myself to developing it. I sacrificed my children and my business to it. I gave up the best years of my life to it. I bore disappointment and poverty because of it. I was at the end of my tether when Miles Madigan went into it with me; and yet when I saw he was bent on freezing me out of it, I--I--But after he got it he didn't know what to do with it. He left it to be worked and himself fleeced by strangers. But--it killed my wife, and left me, after all those years of litigation, an embittered, beggared, broken man!" "And so it's but fair"--to Kate, shivering at the revelation in her father's voice, Miles Morgan's words seemed like soothing music--"it's but fair that you and I should handle the thing together--what there is of it, Mr. Madigan," he added hastily, as Madigan was about to speak; and he leaned forward, holding out his hand boyishly. "There may not be much, but I can get English capital to develop it, at a sacrifice of half its value now, and its possibilities. So that will leave only quarter shares for each of us. I may be offering you only a lot of work and a disappointment at the end. But the thing seemed worth enough to me, 'way over on the other side, to come out here and look into it myself. And one thing that made it seem so was the desperate battle you had fought to keep it. I hoped--I hoped you'd like me well enough, when we got to know each other, to help me with your experience, and--frankly, to help yourself in helping me. I had no intention of saying all this to-night, but--allow me, Cousin Kate." He had dropped Madigan's hand after a hearty squeeze, and was standing holding open the door for Kate to pass.