“Sit down,” said Essex quietly; “I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to get some whisky. That’ll tone you up a bit. The bronchitis has taken it out of you more than you think.” He went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle and glasses. Pouring some whisky into one, he pushed it toward Harney. “There, that’ll brace you up. You’ll feel more yourself in a minute.” He diluted his own with water and only touched the glass’s rim to his lips. His eyes, glistening and intent, were on the drunkard’s now darkly flushing face. The glass rattled against the table as Harney set it down. “That puts mettle into me again. Makes me feel like the old times before the malaria got into my bones. Malaria was my ruin. Got it in the Sierra mining. People think it’s drink that done it, but it’s malaria.” “That was when you knew Moreau? What sort of man was he?” “Poor sort; not any grit. Had a good claim up there beyond Placerville, he and I. Took out’s much as eight thousand in that first summer. Moreau stayed by it, but I quit. Both had our reasons.” “And Miss Moreau, you say, is not Dan Moreau’s daughter. Is she a step-daughter?” “Well--in a sort of a way you might say so. Anyway, she ain’t got no legal right to that name.” “I didn’t know the mother was a widow when she married Moreau?” “She weren’t. She married twict, and she weren’t divorced. There ain’t but two people in the world that knows it. One’s Jake Shackleton’s widow,”--he rose, and, putting an unsteady hand on the table, leaned forward and almost whispered into his interlocutor’s face,--“and the other’s me.” “Are you trying to tell me,” said Essex quietly, “that Miss Moreau is Jake Shackleton’s daughter?” “That’s what she is.” The man turned round like a character on the stage and swept the room with an investigating look--“And she’s more’n that. She’s his lawful daughter, born in wedlock.” The two faces stared at each other. The drunken man was not too far beyond himself to realize the importance of what he was saying. In a second’s retrospect Essex’s mind flew back over the hitherto puzzling interest Shackleton had taken in Mariposa Moreau. Could it be possible the man before him was telling the truth? “How does she come to be known as Moreau’s daughter? Why didn’t Shackleton acknowledge her if she was his legitimate child? That’s a fairy tale.” “There was complications. Have you ever heard that Shackleton was once a Mormon?” Essex had heard the gossip which had persistently followed Shackleton’s ascending course. He nodded his head, gazing at Harney, a presentiment of coming revelations holding him silent.