"You never finished it," said Cousin Jane sharply.
"Let me do so now, then.I was really saved by some Indians, who took me for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm.The first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the boys as 'Old Fusil,' or 'Fusel Oil,' who went into delirium tremens at the sight of me.Well, who do you suppose he turned out to be? Flint! Flint played out and ruined! Cast off and discarded by his relations in New York--the foundation of whose fortunes he had laid by the villainy they had accepted and condoned.
For Flint, as the carpenter of the old homestead, had discovered the existence of a bricked closet in the wall of father's study, partitioned it off so that he could break into it without detection and rifle it at his leisure, and who had thus carried off that part of grandfather's hoard which father had concealed there.He knew it could never be missed by the descendants.But, through haste or ignorance, he DID NOT TOUCH THE PAPERS and documents also hidden there.And THEY told of the existence of grandfather's second cache, or hiding-place, beneath this hearth, and were left for me to discover."He coolly relit his pipe, fixed his eyes on Marie without apparently paying attention to the breathless scrutiny of the others, and went on: "Flint, alias Pierre a Fusil, alias Gunn, died a maniac.I resolved to test the truth of his story.I came here.