Cameron’s Task Completed.

No sooner had the lawyers completed the legal details for the transfer of the House of Cariboo to the purchaser, Nick Perkins, than rumors were afloat that all was not as it seemed about Cameron’s having to sell the mansion to satisfy his creditors. Strange, if it were so, mused Fraser the carpenter, for the day following the sale he saw from his wheelwright’s place the strangers from the city grouped before the door of the smithy, around Bill Blakely and Laughing Donald. The jesting and laughter which he could plainly hear were joined in by Blakely and even Davy Simpson, who left his blazing forge to appear at the door of the shop to witness the pleasure of his friends.

A feeling of uneasiness took possession of the little undersized carpenter, and he drew back from the door and shuffled around among the shavings upon the floor of his workshop. Fear and apprehension had closed in around him so surely that there was no chance of evading the awful certainty of the truth that Perkins had been most artistically duped, and that he had been the one through whom the scheme was so successfully worked. Nick Perkins had acted entirely upon the information he had carried to him, and now as he looked through the dimmed window panes of his workshop and recognized the same men who had so flippantly discussed the affairs of Cameron back from The Front at the station, the extent of the humiliation and expense he had forced upon Perkins, and the extreme satisfaction he had given his enemies, dawned unmercifully upon him.

Again he squirmed in his peculiar sliding fashion around the extent of his place. Stopping at the carpenter’s bench, he took up his plane and tried to forget his predicament in violent muscular exertions. Soon a knock came at the door. At first he paid no attention to it, thinking Bill Blakely had come over to poke fun at him in his very provoking manner. Another knock followed, and the door opened to admit the short, officious personage of Perkins. At sight of his caller, Fraser collapsed into a frightened, shrinking heap, sorrowful to see. Slamming to the door, Perkins glared at the cringing object before him.

“A nice mess you have made of it, Fraser! It’s a wonder you were not in the trick with the rest of them, but they wanted you where you were to do just what you have done—to ruin me, to put every dollar I am worth in the world into that useless house, a monument to Cameron. Every dollar I ever made in the county I have given to Cameron, and he has paid it back to the same people I got it from. The entire cost of that house is not more than fifty thousand. I have paid that back to Cameron. He did not owe a cent to those people you said were representing his creditors in the city, and what is more, I am satisfied now that the talk of the gold in the corner stones is a hoax, like all the rest put up by Cameron to use me in carrying out his philanthropy, which has not cost him a dollar. Yet he has the glory, while I am ridiculed!”

Poor Fraser, confronted by such a terrible arraignment of what he knew to be facts, was utterly confounded. He made no answer, but as Perkins turned in resentment and disgust to go, Fraser, in a weak, thin voice, like a wail of despair, said: “I thought I was doing you a service, Mr. Perkins.” Again Perkins turned, but with a look of dark hatred and disgust cast in his direction, he went out, slamming the door to after him.

It was possibly a week or ten days later when Cameron and LeClare stood again upon the veranda at Laughing Donald’s. Andy’s Dan awaited his passenger at the boat landing for the leave taking of the two friends.

“Lucy and I will expect you, Andy,” earnestly pleaded LeClare. “With you present we shall want for nothing to make our wedding a union of complete happiness.”

Mr. Cameron grasped the extended hand of his faithful associate and friend, saying in his quiet, determined way, “LeClare, we have faced disappointment together, we have endured hardships of a kind to test the merits of our friendship many times before. Defeat we have never acknowledged; sorrow we have borne together side by side in the valley of death. Success and wealth are ours, and happiness, sweetest happiness, Edmond, is yours. Wherever I may be at the call of your wedding bells I will go to add one more good wish for a long journey of life and joy to you.”

At another conference held in the office of Donald Ban, Mr. Cameron had told of his plans for the future. Addressing his friend the lawyer, he had said: “My mission at The Front is finished. The death of Barbara has been avenged. The hypocrites, her tormentors, have been brought very low, the weak are much stronger in person, and justice at last has prevailed. I ask for no thanks or recognition but from our children in Arcadia; in the generations to come may they look awe-inspired as they pass the strange mansion, and be mindful of the moral which was taught when we builded the House of Cariboo.”