TOM IS TROUBLED

If Whalen had any apprehension that the name of Dyker was familiar to Tom it must have been dispelled in Tom’s purposely desultory, cheery talk.

But Tom went back to the cottage that night with a burden on his mind. Ned Whalen, his friend and rescuer, was Anson Dyker, he felt sure of it.

He had been sitting on a rock talking with the grandson of his little old friend down at Temple Camp, the fugitive murderer of Henry Merrick in Kingston. Here upon this lonely mountain the derelict had been cast up and he, Tom, had found him gazing down afar at the vast reservoir which covered the home of his boyhood.

Could there be any doubt of it? Tom thought not. He recalled the look and features of old Caleb as he had seen them in the straining, momentarily aged countenance of his own rescuer. He had ceased to think of that. But now he thought of it in the light of the new discovery. Whalen had searched for that mold-covered record of a visit to the mountain when a boy. And he had been agitated and for a moment had thought of concealing his discovery upon Tom’s approach. Oh, there could be no doubt of it in Tom’s mind.

He knew who Joe Ganley was. He recalled the day he had walked to Temple Camp with old Caleb and they had passed a man in the darkness who the old man had thought was Joe Ganley, a former neighbor in the old village. Joe Ganley. So he and the grandson must have been pals. At least in their boyhood they had made the journey up the mountain together.

Now that he had seen the name cut in the rock along with young Dyker’s, Tom tried to recall what old Caleb had told him about Ganley, that he had settled in the west and prospered and sent money back to his mother with which to build a new house. Tom recalled that he had thought lithe young man must have been exceptionally prosperous to do that. The talk, he recalled, had been occasioned by the erratic little old man mistaking an emaciated, shabby stranger for Joe Ganley.

And that was about all that he remembered of the trivial incident. Now here was this same name carved with that of the grandson on a rock on the mountain top. These two boys had climbed the mountain in nineteen hundred and seven. That was before the murder, before the valley was flooded.

Tom did not sleep that night. The shock of his conviction that Whalen was none other than the fugitive Anson Dyker kept him awake. And in sequel of his discovery, he lived over the story, as he knew it, of the tragedy which had shocked the countryside so long ago.

How different the lives of those two boys who had trudged up the mountain together fifteen years before. When the reservoir drove them out, one went out west, prospered, married, sent money home. In his accustomed surroundings far away did he ever think of his name carved on the top of Overlook Mountain?

And the other. What a botch had he made of his young life! Killed a kindly generous old man and fled. Killed him in futile and insane frenzy. Struck him down in misguided passion born of the worthy love of his grandparents and his boyhood home. How could any person capable of such feelings, such love and loyalty, do such a horrible thing? And this solitary, taciturn man, Ned Whalen, had been that boy.

In his musings, Tom thought of poor old Caleb and his cane, of his wanderings, and of himself, Tom, finding a haven for him at last. He thought of the old man’s sturdy hatred and defiance of the great reservoir and of his resolute conviction of his grandson’s innocence.

But Tom knew more about it than poor old Caleb did, and this train of musing turned his thoughts to Brent Gaylong, good old Brent, and how he had sat on the stool in the newspaper office in Kingston with the full account of the whole business open before him.

He thought (he did not know why) of something that Brent had said to him. He was always recalling things that Brent said. “You can have anything you want if you’re willing to pay the price. I can have the gold cup in Administration Shack but I’d go to jail and that would be the price.”

Tom had laughed at the time but now he was appalled at the awful truth of it. For he knew now—as he lay there wide awake in the little cottage on the summit of Overlook Mountain—he knew that the sprightly Goodfellow was his, that he could stand upon its deck and look about and say, “She’s mine!” That he could raise his owner’s pennant and sail away in her if he really wanted to. Two thousand reward....

Price!

Good old ramshackle, lanky, whimsical Brent. How Tom Slade wished that he could see him now. So that he could tell him the price didn’t interest him....