vagabond, you--you ungrateful young runaway! Here I'm your only solitary
living relative in the whole world, and you sit up in that tree with a big
stone ready to smash me if I come near you."

"Yes, and I will--I will, for a fact!" cried the lad, roused up. "You try
it, and see. Relative? You're no kin of mine, Tim Brady. I'd be ashamed to
own you."

"I hain't?" howled the man. "Who married your step-sister? Who gave you a
home when you was a helpless kid, I'd like to know?"

"Huh, a healthy home!" retorted the boy. "It wasn't your home; it was my
sister's, and you robbed her of it and squandered the money, and broke her
heart, and she died, and you ought to be hung for it!" and the speaker
choked down a sob. "Now you come across me and try to rob me."

"Say," roared Tim Brady, gritting his teeth and looking dreadfully cruel
and hateful, "if I hang twice over I'll get you. Better give me some of
your money."

"It isn't mine to give."

"Better give me some of it, all the same," continued the man, "or I'll take
the whole of it. I'm desperate, Ned Foreman. I'm in a fix where I've got to
get away from these diggings, and I've got to have money to go. Are you
going to be reasonable and come down out of that tree?"

"No, I ain't."

"Then I'm coming after you. See that?" and the man held up a heavy stick