Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/139

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army blanket with them. The Indian could not repress a start of surprise, but as if to make up for this, relapsed into a more profound stolidity.

"Twenty one-thousand-dollar bills!" Harrington expatiated, and swept them up and counted them down one by one before the Indian's eyes, which, despite the taciturnity of his expression, never missed a movement of the money.

"Each of these is one thousand!" emphasized the lawyer. "There are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. A single one of these bills is a dollar a day for almost three years; and there are twenty of them; a dollar a day for sixty years, and that's longer than your father lived upon this island, Adam."

This must have seemed to the Indian an odd conceit, for his flat face was ornamented with a grotesque smile and for the first time since the money had been displayed, he raised his eyes to those of his friend and benefactor. But the smile faded. The look slowly changed to one of infinite perplexity, yet mingled with an infinite patience; as if he thought it strange that his friend could not understand him—as if he were being tortured but by one he loved and whose acts, therefore, he could not protest.

With a movement that was so gentle as not to be offensive, Adam John pushed the money from him. Yet the eager lawyer, watching every expression, thought he caught a twitch of the stolid facial muscles when the Indian's hand actually touched the money. He was weakening after all.

"Aha!" cried Harrington with a Mephistophelian laugh, as he restored the money to its envelope. "I almost got you that time, old scout. But if you waver