Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.
You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he got out and added to the others.
Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.
Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs, and how good I was going to be to him.
When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is, seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it had been Lima beans.