Colonel Hawtrey got the better of Mr. Bradlaugh on the golf links that Monday forenoon. This event, no doubt, pleased the colonel mightily, and yet there was something at the back of the colonel’s consciousness which disturbed him.
Young Merriwell had come to him and had spoken a good word for the colonel’s cast-off nephew. Rather brusquely the colonel had refused to meet Merriwell’s advances on Lenning’s behalf. This, as Hawtrey fondly assured himself, was because the Lenning matter was less an affair of pride than of principle. Yet, for all that, the colonel was sorry that he had been so unyielding.
After Merriwell had left the golf links with Burke and Clancy, Professor Borrodaile had appeared excitedly and announced the robbery of the stage. Instantly, Colonel Hawtrey had thought of Lenning’s mysterious absence from the mine, and, almost as quickly, he had settled it to his own satisfaction that Lenning must have had a hand in the robbery.
So far from making the colonel contented on the score of turning a deaf ear to Merriwell’s plea for Lenning, the information about the robbery and the colonel’s deductions merely disquieted him the more.
In the afternoon Colonel Hawtrey went back to his home in Gold Hill. Here he came directly under the influence of his other nephew, Ellis Darrel.
Darrel, at one time, had occupied a position almost identical with Lenning’s at that moment. There was this difference, however, that Darrel’s hands were clean of
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 any crooked work. He had been plotted against, and the colonel had cast him off unjustly.
Merriwell, believing in Darrel, had helped him to regain his place in his uncle’s regard. And now Darrel, perhaps influenced by Merriwell’s example, was trying to befriend his half brother, Lenning.
The colonel and Darrel had had many talks regarding Lenning. In these interviews Darrel had tried to patch up the differences between the colonel and Jode. In this he had no success whatever. The colonel had finally forbidden Darrel to mention Lenning’s name.
Back from his game with Mr. Bradlaugh, and thoroughly ill-humored because of his disturbing thoughts about Lenning, the colonel repaired to his study. Here Darrel met him and attempted to broach the forbidden subject of his half brother.
“That will do, Ellis!” cried the colonel sharply. “I want no more of your views on the subject of Jode. He has proved himself a crook and a coward—two classes of people I have no use for whatever.”
“I am only asking you to give him a chance, Uncle Alvah,” pleaded Darrel.
“Merriwell seems to be taking good care of Jode. As for a chance, why, the young scoundrel will have to make his own chances for himself. If he could only prove that he had a little courage, a little honesty. I might feel differently toward him. But he’s a coward, he has a yellow streak—and that makes him a disgrace to the family.”
“Then you won’t——”
“I’ll not discuss this any longer with you,” snapped the colonel, and flung himself into a chair and picked up a paper.
Later in the day news came to Gold Hill that the
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 two road agents who had held up the stage had been seen in Bitter Root Cañon, and one of them rode a sorrel horse with a white stocking foot and was believed to be Lenning.
“I don’t doubt it,” growled the colonel. “Is there no depth to Lenning’s baseness? If he is bound to pile disgrace upon disgrace, I wish, for the sake of the rest of us, he would migrate to some other part of the country.”
“I doubt the report, colonel,” said Darrel stoutly. “Jode has turned over a new leaf and he is trying honestly to live down the past. He had no hand in that robbery.”
“What means his absence from the mine?” cried the colonel heatedly. “Put two and two together, Ellis! For Heaven’s sake, don’t try to appear so dense. Lenning was seen in the cañon, near where the stage was robbed—and he was riding a horse that answers the description of Burke’s.”
“Blunt and Ballard thought Lenning was the fellow they saw,” qualified Darrel. “They weren’t sure of it.”
“Well, I’m sure of it, so we’ll let it go at that.”
The irascible old colonel went to bed that night in a bad temper. He did not sleep, however, but lay and tossed restlessly. Visions came to him—visions of Jode and of his only sister, Jode’s mother. In these midnight fancies the face of Jode was haggard and repentant, and the face of the mother was pitiful and pleading. Finally, along toward morning, the colonel could bear his thoughts no longer.
He got up and, for two or three hours, he paced the confines of his bedroom. Something was urging him to probe the facts in Jode’s case. He remembered that he had promised Burke he would visit the mine and settle
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 for the horse and the riding gear. Why not go to the mine that morning?
When Ellis Darrel came down to breakfast, he discovered that his uncle had gone away. Blixen, the most spirited driving horse in the stable, had been put to the road wagon, and Colonel Hawtrey had been last seen making for the Ophir trail.
“It’s something about Jode that’s taking him in that direction,” thought Darrel happily. “The old chap isn’t so hard-hearted as he wants me to think.”
All the way along the trail through Bitter Root Cañon Blixen gave the colonel a handful. The horse had not been out of the stable for two or three days, and was even more spirited and hard to manage than usual. Perhaps it was a good............