Such news of Bernal Linford as had come back to Edom, though meagre and fragmentary, was of a character to confirm the worst fears of those who loved him. The first report came within a year after his going, and caused a shaking of many heads. An estimable farmer, one Caleb Webster, living on the outskirts of Edom, had, in a blameless spirit of adventure, toured the Far West, at excursion rates said to be astounding for cheapness. He had met the unfortunate young man in one of the newer mining towns along his exciting route. "He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption," ran the gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one he'd fell in with out in them parts, that had gone there to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of nothin'! Specially gamblin', which was done right in public, you might say, though the sharpers never skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two was at it every night, and finally they done just like I told the young fools they'd do--they lost all they had. They come into the Commercial House one night where I was settin' lookin' over a time-table, both seemin' down in the mouth. And all to once this sick young man--Mr. Hoover, his name was--bust out cryin'--him bein' weak or mebbe in liquor or somethin'. "'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down those yellow, sunk cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to git chipper again when he sees how Mr. Hoover is takin' it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left, Hoover? Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he says, 'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come my way--at four to one,' he says, or somethin' like that; them gamblin' terms is too much for me. 'Hain't you got nothin' at all left?' he says. "Then this Hoover--still cryin', mind you--he says, 'Not a cent in the world except forty dollars in my trunk upstairs that I saved out to bury me with--and they won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried 'em.' "It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about his own buryin', but it didn't phase Bernal none. "'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, man, what could you do for forty dollars? Don't you know such things are very outrageous in price here? Forty _dollars_--why,' he says, 'the very best you could do would be one of these plain pine things with black cloth tacked on to it, and pewter trimmin's if _any_,' he says. 'Think of _pewter_ trimmin's!' "'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at him, 'you run and dig up your old forty and I'll go back right now and win you out a full satin-lined, silver-trimmed one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate, and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the hands stopped at just the hour it happens,' he says. 'And you want to hurry,' he says, 'it ought to be done right away--with that cough of yours.'