In the bottom of the flask the letter C had been blown, and it now proved who the real owner of that mysterious property had been.
“No doubt about it!” declared Tom Walker, who with others of the crew had come into the kitchen. “No doubt about it! There was an exchange of blouses by the owner of the flask, and the latter was left by Joe as a witness agin Walter. A pretty deep game! Walter, give us your hand. I knew before though that you were all right.”
Tom gripped Walter’s hand as if it were a pump–handle on a dry, hot, thirsty day. Others congratulated Walter, and none more readily than the keeper.
There was no investigation by the district superintendent when he arrived, and the news of the wreck brought him the next day.
Uncle Boardman was destined to have a Christmas present. At least, he began to think it looked like it, for there behind the kitchen stove, swinging from the wooden shelf over the fire–place, was Uncle Boardman’s stocking on Christmas morning. If it were a joke, too bad to send a man barefoot over the cold floors hunting up his property. It was an enormous stocking. No mean, puny leg did Uncle Boardman carry about, and the stocking corresponded. It was a blue stocking, and it was thick and warm. What was a stocking for Uncle Boardman by day, would have made a good blanket for any baby by night. Uncle Boardman looked at the stocking and grinned. “Can’t be anything in it,” he said. “I thought Lydia and I gave up such things long ago.”
But the stocking seemed to say, “Try me and see what I can do for you.”
“I will,” thought Uncle Boardman. Down into the stocking he ran a good sized fist, and fished out a piece of paper neatly folded up.
“One of Lydia’s jokes,” he said. The paper though was directed to “Boardman Blake.” He took it to the eastern window, at which the Christmas sun was hanging an outside curtain of crimson. He opened the missive and read:
“_Dear Boardman:_—I have been thinking about your mortgage, and I have concluded to extend it as you wished, and I know you have had a hard time, and you may have it extended for one or two years, as you like, and not pay any interest. With a wish for a Merry Christmas,
Uncle Boardman felt enough like a happy boy to shout “Hurrah!” and then he skipped upstairs to execute a dance in his wife’s chamber.