Part 13 (1/2)

”Mother has told me that my uncle was all right in his mind while I was a little boy and when my father was alive. But after my father died Uncle Pierre grew kind of queer in his head. My mother thought it was too much study and she advised him to take a rest.

But he said he must get his big history written and he kept on writing and burning the midnight oil as college fellows call it, and it made him queerer and queerer every day.

”One day he went to the post-office for his mail. That was when I was about nine years old. When he got back he began to dance around and he caught me by the hands and rushed around the house like a crazy man. 'A hundred thousand francs! A hundred thousand francs!' he kept calling out, over and over again. Then my mother asked him what he meant. He said a distant relative had died and left him and her a hundred thousand francs.”

”How much is that?” asked Whopper, who knew little about French money.

”A franc is worth about nineteen cents,” said Snap.

”Yes, and a hundred thousand francs is about nineteen thousand dollars,” went on Giant. ”My mother tried to get the particulars from Uncle Pierre, but he was so excited she could not, excepting that half the money was coming to himself and half to her. He said he would see about it the next day.

”That night there came a violent thunderstorm and our house was struck by lightning. The only damage done was to one corner in which was located Uncle Pierre's writing desk. The desk was ripped apart by the lightning bolt and some of his precious ma.n.u.scripts were burnt.

”When my uncle discovered that part of his great historical work had been destroyed he acted as if he was insane. He was almost on the point of committing suicide, but my mother stopped him.

She told him to remember about his good fortune in having all that money left to him, but he only shook his head and said he would rather have his ma.n.u.scripts back. At last she got him to bed, but in the morning he had disappeared.”

”Disappeared?” came from the others.

”Yes. He had put on the oldest suit of clothes he had and gone away.

Of course my mother sent out an alarm, and men hunted all over for him. But he was not to be found.”

”But you found him later,” ventured Snap.

”No, he was never found. When folks learned how queerly he had acted all came to the conclusion that he had gone to the river and drowned himself, and after awhile my mother thought so too.”

”And what of the fortune?” questioned Shep.

”My mother tried to find the letter Uncle Pierre had received, but that was gone too. Then she wrote to France. She learned that some money was really coming to her and my uncle, but could not get any particulars. She even employed a lawyer, but after a year the lawyer gave up, too. There was a mystery about the whole affair and the solution, it seems, rested with my Uncle Pierre.”

”And you never got the money?” asked Whopper.

”Not a dollar of it.”

”It's queer you never spoke about this before,” said Snap.

”Well, mother doesn't like to speak of it, because she doesn't want folks to know we had a crazy man in our family. But Uncle Pierre wasn't really crazy---he was only queer---and that lightning bolt burning up his beloved ma.n.u.scripts unset him completely.”

”I hope you'll get that money some day, Giant,” said Snap. ”I wouldn't give up trying for it so easily.”

”When I am a man and can afford it, I am going to France and try to hunt it up,” answered the small youth.

”Does your mother ever say anything about it?” questioned Shep.

”Not much. She hates to think of my uncle. She was very much attached to him, and to have him disappear like that makes her shudder and feel very bad.”

”Were you living over on the coast when he disappeared?”

”Oh, no, we were living at a place called Bartonville, about twenty miles to the north of here. My father used to be cas.h.i.+er of the Bartonville Lumber Company.”