"You may have noted that the name of Mayhew is upon yonder aspen-tree?"

"And referred to the fact."

"I put it there."

"Yes."

"Then I knew who Black-heart Bill was."

"That is so. I had not thought of that."

"He was the brother of Manton Mayhew, the sergeant."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir."

"You knew Sergeant Mayhew, then?"

"Intimately, for we were boys together."

"Ah! tell me of him."

"We lived near each other, sir, and Manton Mayhew was my rival at school, and also for the love of a pretty girl whom I idolized. He did all in his power to ruin me, and when I obtained a position in a bank, where he also was a clerk, he did wreck my life, for I was accused of robbery, and worse still, of murdering the watchman, who caught me in the act.

"I would surely have been hanged but for the girl I spoke of, who forced me to fly for my life, aiding me to escape. I fled, to prove my innocence, and became a wanderer.

"Then I received a letter from the woman I loved, telling me that she had discovered that I really was a thief and a murderer, and that she abhorred where she had loved me.

"And more, when, in my despair I wrote to one who had been my friend to hear from home, I was told that Manton Mayhew had been the means of ruining my father financially, and the blow had driven him to suicide, while my poor mother, heart-broken, had died soon after my flight.

"Nor was this all, for Hugh Mayhew, the brother of Manton, had married the girl I had loved.

"Several years after other news came to me from my old home, and to the effect that Manton Mayhew had gone to the bad and in a drunken brawl had wounded a companion fatally as he had believed, and he had fled no one knew where.

"His brother Hugh had wrecked his father's bank, and in a drunken frenzy had shot his wife one night, and he, too, had become a fugitive. Well, to end the story quickly, for I hate to dwell upon it, Manton Mayhew had joined the army, and, a good soldier, had become a sergeant."

"Ordered to Fort Faraway he had met there Sergeant Weston, whom he recognized, and, fearing to be exposed in his crimes, he had at once attacked him, telling him he would kill him, and say that it was on account of his insubordination.

"But Wallace Weston was armed, having just been given a revolver by an officer to take to his quarters, and he killed Mayhew as he was about to drive a knife to his heart.

"Rather than bring out the old story, and, perhaps, be carried back East to be tried for the murder of the bank watchman, of which he was innocent, Sergeant Wallace Weston submitted in silence to his trial and accepted his fate, feeling that his life was one of despair."

"And do you know all this to be as you have stated?" asked Surgeon Powell, when the gold-hunter had finished his story.

"I do, sir."

"Knowing it, you did not come to the rescue of poor Weston?"

"I did not, sir."

"May I ask why?" and Frank Powell spoke sternly.

"I will tell you the reason, Surgeon Powell, if you will pledge me your word to receive it in sacred confidence."

"I will so pledge myself, Mr. Seldon."

"Because, sir, _I am Wallace Weston_."

Frank Powell was always a calm, cool man, but now he sprang to his feet, dropping his pipe, and cried:

"Do you speak the truth?"

"I do, sir."

"Upon honor?"

"Yes."

"Now I recognize the look that has so haunted me since I met you this morning. Upon my soul, Weston, I am glad to see that you are not dead, that you can clear up the story of Mayhew's killing and announce yourself once more a guiltless man."

"But I cannot, sir, for you forget that I am accused of murdering the watchman and robbing the bank."

"Is there no way in which you can disprove that?"

"Only by the confession of the guilty ones."

"Who were they?"

"The Mayhews, and one other."

"They were guilty?"

"Yes, sir."

"And who was the other man?"

"A clerk in the bank and devoted friend of the Mayhews."

"Where is he?"

"I do not know, sir."

"And they are dead."

"Manton and Hugh Mayhew are dead, by my hand, but where proof of their crime can be found I cannot tell, and so I am forced to hide under an a.s.sumed name--yes, Doctor Powell, the name of a dead man, Andrew Seldon, the one whose body was found by the rock in the desert and buried for mine."

"You have had a remarkable escape, Weston----"