“So you see,” Joe concluded, “it could n’t possibly have turned out any better.”

“Ah, well,” Mr. Bronson deliberated judiciously, “it may be so, and then again it may not.”

“I don’t see it.”  Joe felt sharp disappointment at his father’s qualified approval.  It seemed to him that the return of the safe merited something stronger.

That Mr. Bronson fully comprehended the way Joe felt about it was clearly in evidence, for he went on:  “As to the matter of the safe, all hail to you, Joe!  Credit, and plenty of it, is your due.  Mr. Tate and myself have already spent five hundred dollars in attempting to recover it.  So important was it that we have also offered five thousand dollars reward, and but this morning were considering the advisability of increasing the amount.  But, my son,”—­Mr. Bronson stood up, resting a hand affectionately on his boy’s shoulder,—­“there are certain things in this world which are of still greater importance than gold, or papers which represent what gold may buy.  How about yourself?  That ’s the point.  Will you sell the best possibilities of your life right now for a million dollars?”

Joe shook his head.

“As I said, that ’s the point.  A human life the money of the world cannot buy; nor can it redeem one which is misspent; nor can it make full and complete and beautiful a life which is dwarfed and warped and ugly.  How about yourself?  What is to be the effect of all these strange adventures on your life—­your life, Joe?  Are you going to pick yourself up to-morrow and try it over again? or the next day? or the day after?  Do you understand?  Why, Joe, do you think for one moment that I would place against the best value of my son’s life the paltry value of a safe?  And can I say, until time has told me, whether this trip of yours could not possibly have been better?  Such an experience is as potent for evil as for good.  One dollar is exactly like another—­there are many in the world:  but no Joe is like my Joe, nor can there be any others in the world to take his place.  Don’t you see, Joe?  Don’t you understand?”

Mr. Bronson’s voice broke slightly, and the next instant Joe was sobbing as though his heart would break.  He had never understood this father of his before, and he knew now the pain he must have caused him, to say nothing of his mother and sister.  But the four stirring days he had lived had given him a clearer view of the world and humanity, and he had always possessed the power of putting his thoughts into speech; so he spoke of these things and the lessons he had learned—­the conclusions he had drawn from his conversations with ’Frisco Kid, from his intercourse with French Pete, from the graphic picture he retained of the Reindeer and Red Nelson as they wallowed in the trough beneath him.  And Mr. Bronson listened and, in turn, understood.

“But what of ’Frisco Kid, father?” Joe asked when he had finished.