Carnac's Folly

Tarboe nodded. "I expected that. She is worth the best the world can offer." There was a ring of honesty in his tone. "All the more reason why I should tell you what my news is, Carnac. I'm going to tell you what oughtn't yet to be told for another two years, but I feel it due you, for you were badly used, and so I break my word to your father."

Carnac's hand shot out in protest, but Tarboe took no notice. "I mean to tell you now in the hour of your political triumph that--"

"That I can draw on you for ten thousand dollars, perhaps?" shot out Carnac.

"Not for ten thousand, but in two years' time--or to-morrow--for a hundred and fifty times that if you want it."

Carnac shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what you're driving at, Tarboe. Two years from now--or to-morrow--I can draw on you for a hundred and fifty times ten thousand dollars! What does that mean? Is it you're tired of the fortune left you by the biggest man industrially French-Canada has ever known?"

"I'll tell you the truth--I never had a permanent fortune, and I was never meant to have the permanent fortune, though I inherited by will. That was a matter between John Grier and myself. There was another will made later, which left the business to some one else."

"I don't see."

"Of course you don't see, and yet you must." Tarboe then told the story of the making of the two wills, doing justice to John Grier.

"He never did things like anyone else, and he didn't in dying. He loved you, Carnac. In spite of all he said and did he believed in you. He knew you had the real thing in you, if you cared to use it."

"Good God! Good God!" was all Carnac could at first say. "And you agreed to that?"

"What rights had I? None at all. I'll come out of it with over a half-million dollars--isn't that enough for a backwoodsman? I get the profits of the working for three years, and two hundred thousand dollars besides. I ought to be satisfied with that."

"Who knows of the will besides yourself?" asked Carnac sharply.

"No one. There is a letter to the bank simply saying that another will exists and where it is, but that's all.

"And you could have destroyed that will in my favour?"

"That's so." The voice of Tarboe was rough with feeling, his face grew dark. "More than once I willed to destroy it. It seemed at first I could make better use of the property than you. The temptation was big, but I held my own, and now I've no fear of meeting anyone in Heaven or Hell. I've told you all....