“He made two mistakes, however. One was that he forget that there is an Almighty God watching over us all. The other was that he foolishly intrusted all the incriminating papers in his conspiracy to a hollow in an oak tree.”
“It’s false!” shouted Jordan, now fully beside himself and rising to shake an impotent and trembling fist in Mr. Williams’s face. “It’s false, and I can prove it. John Carden is dead, and the money is all mine! John Carden is dead, and----”
“John Carden is alive!” cried a clear voice, as the door burst open to admit the speaker. And then John Carden himself strode into the room, followed by his son Will.
“Hurrah!” shouted the doctor, and springing to his feet he dashed at his old friend and actually embraced him in the exuberance of his joy. Chester D. Williams had never seen John Carden before; but the men were not strangers, for all that, since Will had told his father all the details of the great manufacturer’s history, and never wearied singing his praises. So in a moment the two men had clasped hands, the beginning of a friendship long to continue.
Jordan, shrinking back against the wall in abject terror at this denouement, made a stealthy effort to escape through the open door, but was halted by the burly form of the commercial traveller in the checked suit, who suddenly occupied the doorway.
“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s no hurry,” said the fellow, with a grin. “Better stay and see the fun. It’s going to be hot in a minute.”
Then he retreated and closed the door behind him, and Jordan turned to confront the blazing eyes and sternly set features of the man he had so bitterly wronged.
Man’s justice is helpless to punish adequately such crimes as Ezra Jordan had been guilty of, and John Carden was so grateful for the final restoration of his beloved wife and children that he was not disposed to prosecute legally the false friend who had been responsible for his years of anguish.
“Let us leave this criminal to a Judgment surer and mightier than ours,” he said, and the others acquiesced in his decision.
But in the stormy interview that followed Mr. Williams stipulated that Jordan, as a price of his personal freedom, should refund to John Carden every penny of that vast sum of money of which he had so treacherously defrauded him, and although it was worse than death to the miser to disgorge his ill-gotten gains, he was forced to agree to the proposition.