I'd give it its chance; but as
I haven't got it, I live as I do--poor and unknown."
"Not unknown. See, you could control what belonged to John Grier, if you
would. I need some one to show me how to spend the money coming from the
business. What is wealth unless you buy things that give pleasure to
life? Do you know--"
He got no further. "I don't know anything you're trying to tell me,
and anyhow this is not the place--" With that she hastened from him up
the street. Tarboe had a pang, and yet her very last words gave him
hope. "I may be a bit sharp in business," he said to himself, "but I
certainly am a fool in matters of the heart. Yet what she said at last
had something in it for me. Every woman has an idea where a man ought
to make love to her, and this open road certainly ain't the place. If
Carnac wins this game with Barouche I don't know where I'll be with her-
maybe I'm a fool to help him." He turned the letter over and over in his
hand. "No, I'm not. I ought to do it, and I will."
Then he fell to brooding. He remembered about the second hidden will.
There came upon him a wild wish to destroy it. He loved controlling John
Grier's business. Never had anything absorbed him so. Life seemed a new
thing. The idea of disappearing from the place where, with a stroke of
his fingers, he moved five thousand men, or swept a forest into the great
river, or touched a bell which set going a saw-mill with its many cross-
cut saws, or filled a ship to take the pine, cedar, maple, ash or elm
boards to Europe, or to the United States, was terrible to him.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43