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"Five hundred pounds of money!" exclaimed Silas, after he had spelled the words over three times to satisfy himself that he had made no mistake. "How did he ever make out to carry that heft of greenbacks clear across the ocean and up into these mountings? If I find it, I'll have to bring it down on my wagon, won't I? And where'll I put it after I get it so that it will be safe? That's what's a bothering of me now."

Silas was already beginning to feel the responsibilities that weigh upon capitalists, one of whom assures us that he finds it harder work to take care of his money than it was to accumulate it. Silas made a note of all the good hiding-places which he could recall to mind on the spur of the moment, and then went on with his reading:

—"and the next day I shipped for New York. I wish I had never done it. A coming over the ocean, I made the acquaintance of a man who coaxed me to go to Californy with him, and there we fell in with two more who were as bad as we was, and we went into a bank there, and took out seventy thousand dollars. So we went to Canady, and stayed there till the country got too hot for us, and then we come to these mountings. So we went along till we come to the old Indian road. One day my chum dropped his pipe down a crack in the rocks, and he said he would have it again if he broke his neck a getting it. So he slid down about twelve feet, and there was as nice a cave in the rock as you ever see.