“Guess that memorial service must be all over, from the racket they’re makin’ with them tarnal carts,” he said.

When they reached Willis, they found him carefully going through the pockets of the musty old coat hanging upon the wall.  The cloth had fairly rotted in the moisture.  Tad was holding the treasures as Willis removed them from the pockets.  To Tad’s surprise, there was inside the coat an old vest.  They were no doubt the clothes Mr. Thornton had worn the day of the accident.  In one vest pocket was Bill’s gold watch, in another a musty pocketbook and a badly worn note-book that had mildewed in the moisture.  There were three letters in the outside coat pocket.  Willis took one, moist and rotten as it was, from the envelope and noticed they were from his mother, and were probably the last ones she had written.  Willis’s hand shook violently and two great tears glistened in his eyes.  In the other outside pocket was a strange tin tube, perhaps a foot in length, with a removable lid at either end.  The tube was rusted red and the ends sealed tight with rust.  Willis handed the tube to Tad, a question on his lips.

“Thank God,” Tad was saying to himself, “thank God, he didn’t do it.  I’ve often thought I’d kill him if he had.”

“If who had what?” questioned Willis.

“Don’t ask me, lad, not now—­I’ll tell you some time, perhaps.  Come, let’s go.  This air is very bad, and I’m just a little sick.”  He linked his arm through Willis’s, and together they walked out into the cold morning air.  Ben and Ham followed.  When they were outside, Tad swung the door shut and locked it.  Then, with a note of triumph in his voice, he said: 

“There, Williams can have the place for all I care,” and he held the queer tin tube in his hand before them.

“Open it,” urged Willis.  Tad turned to him.

“My boy, there has never been a day in the past half-dozen years that I have not wondered what became of that tin tube.  Many times, after hours of reasoning, I have decided that your uncle stole that tube from your father’s belongings.  I have done the man an injustice.  From my firm belief that he had taken the tube came my great dislike for him.  You have never seen the contents of that can, lad, but your mother has.  At one time they were very valuable, and I have no doubt that even now that can contains a small fortune for you—­”

“But—­” interrupted Willis.  Tad paid no attention to him, and went on: 

“The contents of that tube will place your father among the greatest of mining engineers and give his name the honor it has always been entitled to—­”

“But Tad—­”