After all, had he meant always to be cruel, that keen-eyed old man with his keener wits?  What conflict of spirit and body had lain behind his fretful fits of temper?

Kenny turned, blinking, from the wheelchair, and his glance, blurred a little, found the old man’s glasses on the mantel.  The shabby case, left behind while Adam faced the great adventure, was oddly pitiful.  Kenny cleared his throat.  He had his moment of rebellion then at the inevitability of death and doom.  It behooved all of us, he remembered with set lips, to be kind and mend quarrels while the sap of life ran in our veins, strong and full.

The sight of the key upon the table sent his thoughts flying off at a tangent.  A miser’s will! . . .  Mother of Men!  It was a thing of morbid mystery and romance!

Kenny sat down in wild excitement and opened the drawer.

He saw at once an orderly packet of papers.  The will, which barely a month ago, Hughie said, he and Hannah had signed without reading, lay uppermost.  Adam had written his will himself, disdaining lawyers.

Kenny opened the will and began to read.  He read as he always read in moments of excitement, blurring through with a glance.  But though the old man’s writing was distinct and almost insolent in its boldness, the portent of the written words did not filter through at once to his understanding.  He frowned and read again.  Once more he read, pacing the floor with unquiet eyes.  A number of things were becoming clearer.  There was in the first place no mention of the fugitive nephew.  Joan was the sole heir.  There was one executor.  That executor was Joan’s guardian and Joan’s guardian was one—­Kennicott O’Neill!  Kenny read the name aloud as if it belonged to someone else.  Joan’s guardian!  Again he read the clause aloud with an exclamation of doubt and unbelief.  It lay there definite and clear.  He was the sole executor of Adam’s will and he was Joan’s guardian.  Startled he read the rest.

“To Kennicott O’Neill, my friend, my signet ring . . . to my niece, Joan West, from whom, no matter what the circumstances, I have never had an unkind word, I bequeath the Craig farm and all the land and all the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth wheresoever situate, provided the executor can find it.”

Kenny went back with a feeling of numbness in his brain and read it all again.

“The rest of my wealth wheresoever situate . . . provided the executor can find it!”

Those words he scanned blankly with a feeling of much fire in his head and a tantalizing cloud before his eyes.  They meant what?  Strange hints and subtle smiles recurred to him. . . .  And Adam had been a miser who read of buccaneers and hidden treasure. . . .  Buccaneers and hidden treasure! . . .  He would have hidden pirates’ gold, he had said, under the biggest apple-tree in the orchard, under the lilac bush or . . .  Where else had he said? . . .  And . . what . . had . . he . . meant?