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Sally Dows by Bret Harte
page 200 of 203 (98%)
Uncle Sylvester took the coin back, placed it in his left eye, like a
monocle, and winked gravely at the company.

"It is the SAME!" he went on quietly. "I was interested, for I had a
good memory, and I remembered that, as a boy, grandfather had shown
me one of those coins and told me he was keeping them for old Jules du
Page, who didn't believe in banks and bank-notes. Well, I traced them to
a trader called Flint, who was shipping gold dust from Stockton to Peter
Gunn & Sons, in New York."

"To whom?" asked Gabriel quickly.

"Old Gunn--the father of your friend!" said Uncle Sylvester blandly. "We
talked the matter over on our way to the station this morning. Well, to
return. Flint only said that he had got them from a man called Thompson,
who had got them from somebody else in exchange for goods. A year or
two afterwards this same Thompson happened to be frozen up with me in
Starvation Camp. When he thought he was dying he confessed that he had
been bribed by Flint to say what he had said, but that he believed the
coins were stolen. Meantime, Flint had disappeared. Other things claimed
my attention. I had quite forgotten him, until one night, five years
afterwards, I blundered into a deserted mining-camp, by falling asleep
on my mule, who carried me across a broken flume, but--I think I told
you that story already."

"You never finished it," said Cousin Jane sharply.

"Let me do so now, then. I was really saved by some Indians, who took me
for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm. The
first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the
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