 CHAPTER XVI Mr. Treadwell explains all. Jerry, said Mr. Treadwell kindly, I'm downright sorry to find you feeling so poorly. Please not be worried about my visit here. I want to see you and have a little interview with you, I'll admit. An interview I've been trying to accomplish for several years. But perhaps you ain't feel equal to it right now. I don't want to take unfair advantage of you and your eel. My as well have it over and done with, grown Jerry. I'm all in now, I'm done. Better have it over. Very well, perhaps we had, agreed Mr. Treadwell. Is your wife bound anywhere? No, she ain't. She went off to Punta Gorda this morning to see her folks, I reckon. Coward thought Bernice and Sidney simultaneously. She just didn't want to face the music. That so? Well, with your permission I'll ask my folks to come up here on the veranda. It's rather hot out there in the sun and I imagine this will prove a long interview. Jerry nodded impassively, and Mr. Treadwell escorted the three others to the porch, made the introductions, and found them seats. Mrs. Conan occupied the only other vacant chair. Mr. Treadwell seated himself on a bench. Bernice and Sidney perched on the edge of the unrailed porch, and delight went over to stand by Jerry's chair. It was a curious group, and upon it the weather-beaten old woman who owned the house stared out at regular intervals from windows and doors. As she was nearly stoned deaf, so they afterward learned, she must have been thoroughly mystified by the whole performance. Perhaps it'd be just as well, began Mr. Treadwell, if I commenced by asking you, Jerry, a few of the questions I've been anxious to put to you for some time past. You've been dodging an interview with me for a long while, but you needn't have feared it really. I hold nothing dangling against you. I only wanted you to explain the circumstances of having in your charge this child, about whom there seems to be some mystery. At this, Jerry, who'd been sitting with his arms folded and his head bent, glanced up uneasily. But he made no response, and delight, standing at his side, slipped an arm across his shoulder. Jerry, went on Mr. Treadwell, coming at once to the point. Was this child, Delight, left in your care by a man named Colfax? Jerry looked up now in real astonishment. No. At least that ain't the name he gave me, he answered, regardedly. Oh, then there was a man who left her in your care. Am I to ask his name, then? The guide shifted uneasily. I ain't no right to tell. Gave my solemn word. What you got me cornered. His name was Wyndham. At least so he told me. Harry Wyndham. It was Mr. Treadwell's turn to be startled. Oh! he exclaimed uncertainly. And then after a moment's thought. Of course! I see. It's all right. And the same thing, anyway. Now, will you tell me why you've kept this child hidden away from civilization so long? He wanted it so, declared Jerry sullenly. He made me promise on his dying bed that I'd never let her come to your folks again. But I'd keep her in the glades always. He gave me money for her keep. Nothing I wanted it. I was that fond of her I would've brung her up anyway on my own. Well, he gave me money and said to keep her in the glades away from them all. I don't know what he'd done that he was hiding from them. But I reckoned he didn't want her to suffer after he was dead and gone for no crime of his. At this point Mr. Treadwell strode across the porch and stared Jerry straight in the eye. Inconscious do you mean by that, for no crime of his? Explain yourself. Jerry's stare was equally bewildered. Well, if you hadn't acquitted no crime, what for was he hiding in the glades? Only fellows that are getting away from the law is anxious to slip into the glades and stay there. That's another reason I've been dodging you all these years. I thought you was trying to get hold of his daughter to answer for what he'd done. Mr. Treadwell sat down heavily on his bench and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he smiled a rather grim smile. Well, all the misunderstandings he gassed. I guess it's time I told you my story at this point to avoid any further complications. I might as well tell you that I represent the estate of a very wealthy family in New York by name of Colfax. Every adult member of which is now dead. Fifteen years ago there were three members living. The senior Mr. Henry Colfax, his eldest son, Henry Wyndham Colfax, and a younger brother, Anson. They were a very unhappy family whose chief disagreement was over the matter of money in the biggest state. I cannot go just now into details, but Father greatly favored his younger son, Anson, who was of a particularly disagreeable and grasping nature and seemed to have an unusual influence over his parent. Now the elder son, Harriet, was as far removed in nature and disposition as can be imagined from that of his two relatives. He was a deep student interested in everything under the son but money, and never understood his father and brother. He had married a wife of whom his father did not approve, chiefly because she was a girl of no money or family, and so, of course, an added thorn in his side. The older son would gladly have given up his interest in the father's fortune except that he very much wanted money to pursue some scientific investigation to which he had dedicated his whole life. At length, however, the situation at home became so unpleasant and unbearable to him that he took his wife and his very young infant daughter and departed for Florida, announcing that he never intended to return. He had been there only a little over a year when I was called upon to inform him that his father had died, leaving the entire estate infortune to the younger brother by a will made only a few days before he passed away. I inquired if he intended to contest the will. The only reply I received was to the effect that he did not intend to contest the will, that he was through with the entire connection for ever, and that he intended to disappear from civilization at once, never to return, and wish no effort ever to be made to trace him. The affair was thus dropped, and concerned me no more for a number of years, five to be accurate. Then, quite suddenly, in an automobile accident, the younger brother was killed. As he was unmarried and had died in her state, it devolved on me to hunt up the heirs of the biggest state. There were absolutely no immediate ones except the older brother and his child, if either of them was still in the land of the living. As the last I had heard of young Harry Colfax was down in the region of Florida, I began my search there. It was, however, a curiously unsatisfactory one. Harry Colfax had always been deeply interested in the Everglades. Then even more a mystery than they are now, and, therefore, contugged my search in their vicinity. I heard many vague rumors about him, though he had never been seen since his father's death. It seemed to be known that he had gone with the guide into the deepest depths of the wilderness, accompanied also by his wife and child. None of the three had been seen since, though some knew the guide had occasionally come out for supplies. But even he had not been seen for a long while of late, and some said that the man was dead, that his wife was dead, that they were all dead, even the guide. I could get no satisfaction at all. But as there was much element of uncertainty I was obliged to return to New York, and the matter of the inheritance had to be held in abeyance. Then, three years ago, I happened to be down here at Fort Lauderdale on business and heard a strange tale from a young schoolteacher in the town of a mysterious child who had attended her school. Learned to read with wonderful celerity, but would never talk of herself or her people. She always came to school from the glades in a canoe. The teacher said it was rumored that she was in charge of the famous guide Jerry Sawgrass. At this point Jerry looked up with startled glance, but he made no comment on what he had heard, and delight appeared to shrink away from him as if in fear. Thinking I might be on the trail at last I had Jerry pointed out to me one day in the town, and asked him quite directly if he had a little white girl in his care. He lied to me with coolness and plausibility. But just for a fraction of a second I had caught him off his guard, and I did not quite believe him. I was still more convinced something was queer, because I saw him no more from that time and understood that he had disappeared from the vicinity. But the Everglades are the one fastness left in this country where fugitives may successfully conceal themselves. And I knew it was useless and worse than useless to pursue Jerry into them. I saw and heard no more of him till a few days ago in Jasper. I got that fugitive and almost unbelievable glimpse of him. And so it's all led to this. It would be a great satisfaction to me, Jerry, if you could tell me your side of the story and clear up a few of these hazy points. Jerry moved in his chair uneasily and cast a half-apologetic glance at the company. I ain't used to talking, he faltered. I can only say as I took up with this year Harry Wyndham he called himself about fourteen years ago. He wants a guide to go into the deepest part of the Everglades and he wants to take his wife and little one with him. I says it's unusual and probably risky for him, but he says no. For gone to all live there and not go back to town life no more. He says he wants to study and things like that. But I suspect from the first that he's got something on his conscience. Probably a big forgery or something and he wants to keep out of sight. I've seen a lot like that. The Glades is a place for him. We goes into the deepest part and camps there and he reads and writes and stares at things through a glass and all that. Well he never goes out to the edge of the Glades. Not even for supplies when we need him. I does all that. After we'd been there about a year, the young lady, his wife, steps on a rattlesnake one day. Poor thing and dies next day from it. We couldn't have saved her. I thought he'd go crazy then, but still he won't go back to the towns. We bury her in the swamps and he doesn't know what to do with the little one. So I tells him I really got married to an Indian girl a while before I met up with him. She's with her people yet in a camp about fifty miles north, but if he likes I'll go get her and she can keep house for us and take care of the baby. He just jumps at it and so I brought one to get there. About a year or two later he gets sick himself. I don't know what held him, but he just seemed a pine away like. He didn't read and write no more, just sat staring out over the Glades and playing with the baby sometimes. He makes me promise before the end that I'll never, never let the child go away from the Glades or grow up where people was. There's reason, he says, but you'll never understand it. He gives me all the money he has left for her. I wants to get a doctor for him, but he won't have it. One morning I finds him dead, right there in his bed, as if he'd slept away. After a while I went back to my old work being a guide, but I never let the child go near the towns. I never know what she'd learned to read. I was afraid for her to get any book-learning, for fear she'd find out. I didn't ever want her to answer for her father's crime, whatever it was. I, well, I loved a little thing. Won't eat, can I, did? If I had a node, he swallowed hard. Then he went on. I married that cracker woman lately and come up north because I ain't well. Something's ailing me and I don't know what. But I couldn't live in the Glades no more and I wanted little Dell to be cared for, somehow, if anything happened to me. I guess it wasn't a very lucky move. He smiled blindly at the first and only joke he had ever tried to make. It was the luckiest thing he could've done, Jerry, laughed Mr. Treadwell. And now, as you've cleared up everything for us capital-y, it only remains for me to see those papers you have in your possession. Burn East and Sydney, and prove beyond the legal per-adventure, by verifying the writen, that the hairy windom of the Everglades was the hairy coal-fax at New York, my client. Have I your permission to examine them, Miss Delight? These two friends of yours have been very faithful to their promise to you, and forbidden me to have the briefest glimpse of them. Delight stared at him with an uncomprehending look and murmured something in articulate. So astonishing had these revelations been, and withal so unexpected that even now she had not taken them in nor realized they were bearing on her own affairs. Jerry himself was regarding confusedly the packet of papers that Burn East had taken from her handbag. Now show these to Mr. Treadwell now, asked Burn East quietly of Delight. The sound of her familiar voice seemed to rouse the girl at last out of her days. Why, yes, she stammered. Why, I reckon you can. I don't seem to know yet quite what it's all about, but I don't want any harm to come to Uncle Jerry. Don't have the slightest fear of that, dear child, exclaimed Mr. Treadwell, as he received the papers. Your Uncle Jerry deserves only the highest praise and commendation for what he has done. It was only through an unavoidable misapprehension on his part that he was forced to play the role of a constant fugitive, and a stupid mistake on mine that I did not recognize him for the faithful guardian he's always been. Well, we're going to straighten all that out now. While he was examining the papers and comparing them with old letters he had taken from his wallet, Delight turned to Jerry and rested her head on his shoulder. Some inkling of the truth was at last beginning to dawn on her. Are they going to take me away from you? She whispered. I reckon they are, honey. He returned hoarsely. If you got all the money they say, and your daddy won't know criminal like I always thought, then there ain't no reason in the world why you should have to stay any longer with old Jerry Solgrass. I won't go, I won't go, she cried then, flinging herself behind him in a passion of tears. He got to, honey. He soothed her smoothing her dark hair. I can't keep you here any longer now. It was at this crisis that Mrs. Conan stepped into the breach. If Mr. Treadwell and Jerry will agree to it, she began. I should like to invite Delight to come and make a stay with Bernice myself. We are to go into our new bungalow in a day or two, and I know we shall both enjoy having her with us. And as she knows Bernice so well, the companionship will help her to bear her loneliness in leaving her a custom environment. Nothing could be better, cried Mr. Treadwell, putting the papers aside. I'd been rather puzzled as to how we should arrange matters in that respect, anyway, and this is a splendid solution for the present. Will you consent to it, Mr. Delight? Bernice's eyes implored her as she visibly wavered between her allegiance to her foster-uncle, and prospect of the life with the companion to whom she had become so much detached. But Jerry himself settled the question by pushing her from him toward Bernice and her mother. You go with him, he baiter. There are the right ones for you now. Mr. Treadwell got up and came over to Jerry. There's not the slightest doubt about the identity of my client with the man you cared for in the glade so long. The writing on these pages of his journal is identical with that of letters bearing his own signature. I can only say now that, though there are many details to be arranged, the future of little Delight Colfax will necessarily be very different from her past. But that does not mean that we intend to separate her from you, Jerry. You have been faithful to the utmost and such a separation would be more than cruel. We must talk over what arrangements we can make. You do not seem at all well. Will you not allow me to take you to Jasper with us and get you the medical attention you need? But on this point Jerry was adamant. No, no, thank you, sir. Just the same. I've got to stay here till I get over this. It'll pass. I've had the same thing before this. When I can travel again, we'll go back to old number six, my wife and me, and stay on there. It suits us. And maybe sometimes I can see her. Little Del here. Just once and so often. So she won't quite forget me, you know. There isn't a shadow of doubt, Mr. Treadwell assured him rather huskily, that she'll want to see you, with extreme regularity. Half an hour later, her belongings all packed in the car and her tearful farewell paid to the guardian who had cared for her so long. Delight Colfax stepped in beside Mrs. Conan and Bernice. As the big motor slid away to the low pur of its perfect mechanism, she leaned out of the car for a good-bye to the still figure seated on the porch. I run down the day or two and bring it back to number six, called back Mr. Treadwell in parting, and we'll come with him and bring the fort along to help, sang out Sidney. Bernice, too, had an inspiration, and Delight and I are going over to number six to get the house all ready for you, she shouted as her contribution. There was something so heartening about these kindly common places that declared the atmosphere of the inevitable and the tragic for Jerry. The faded blue sun-monet was poked out of the door, and the cracked voice of the deaf old woman, unable to any longer contain her curiosity, demanded, "'Who are them people, anyhow?' "'My folks,' he explained to her in pantomime. The suspicion of a complacent twinkle in his eye. And to the occupants of the departing car he shouted lustily, "'All right, I'll be expecting you!' The End