WHO KILLED JOHN BURBANK? 5

meeting, the superintendent's report that every
vein in the mines had ceased to yield“ paying ore.
It afterward carne out that he had read from the
foot of the report a date much later than that
affixed at themine. All summerlong he had known
the truth, had suppressed it, and through men of
straw, who held shares on his behalf, had victim-
ized intimate friends, including my father. Never
did ‘Silver Islet pay its unfortunate owners a six-
pence thereafter. In that far-away venture dis-
appeared what was meant for my little patrimony.
And all without anybody being able to prove in a
court of law the sharp practice and treachery of
john Burbank.

Two of his nephews, Andrew and Mark, sat on
a bench next mine at Wilson's School in Coté
Street. They were not bad fellows at all, so far
as I could see. But they were expected to break
out at any time into badness and falseness by
most of us boys who, boy-like, were disposed to
visit the sins of the guilty on the heads of the
innocent. The chimney-cowl of \Vilson's School,
one night mischievously twisted into a note of
interrogation, was plainly visible from my bed-
room. It was in a class-room beneath that sooty
chimney that I found the warmest friend of my
life, Gerald Gray, whose family, in my school-days,
had been our next-door neighbors. Gerald was
a few months older than l . a good deal bigger, a