Campbell's Kingdom Read Online Free

of my surroundings. He got to his feet. ‘I will leave these documents with you, Mr Wetheral. I think when you have had time to consider them—’ He snapped the lock of his empty brief case. ‘Here is my card. I shall be in my office between nine and ten in the morning. Perhaps you will telephone me then, or better still come in and see me.’
    â€˜I’ll let you know what I decide,’ I said and took him down to the front door.
    Then I hurried eagerly back to my room. I wanted to read the personal letter attached to the will. It was addressed in a bold, upright, rather childish hand. I slit the envelope. Inside was a single sheet: it was very direct and simple. No words were wasted. It was the letter of a man who had lived a lot of his life alone out in the wilds.
    For my grandson
    â€˜Campbell’s Kingdom,’
    To be attached to my will
    Come Lucky, B.C.
    15th March, 1947
    Dear Bruce,
    It is possible you may recall our one meeting, since the circumstances were peculiar. With your mother’s death I became entirely cut off from you, but in the last few weeks I have been able to obtain some information concerning your progress and your military record in the recent conflict. This leads me to believe that there is enough of the Campbell in you for me to hand on to you the aims, hopes and obligations that through age and misfortune I have been unable to fulfil.
    I imagine that you are fully informed of the circumstances of my imprisonment. However, in case you should have attributed your mother’s belief in my innocence to filial loyalty, here is the testimony of a man who, when you receive this letter, will be dead:
    I, Stuart Macaulay Campbell, swear before God and on His Holy Book that everything I did and said in connection with the flotation of an oil company in London known as the Rocky Mountain Oil Exploration Company was done and said in all good faith and that every word of that section of the prospectus dealing with the oil possibilities in the territory now commonly known as ‘Campbell’s Kingdom’ was true to the best of my knowledge and belief, based on more than twelve years in the Turner Valley field and neighbouring territories. And may the Lord condemn me to the everlasting fires of Hell if this testimony be false.
    Signed: Stuart Macaulay Campbell.
    After my release I returned to Canada to prove what I knew to be true. With the help of kind friends I formed the Campbell Oil Exploration Company. All my shares in this I leave to you, together with the territory in which my bones will rest. If you are the man I hope you are, you will accept this challenge, so that I may rest in peace and my life be justified in the end. May the Good Lord guide you and keep you in this task and may success, denied to me by the frailty of old age, attend your efforts.
    Your Humbled and Grateful Grandfather Stuart Macaulay Campbell
    P.S. The diary of my efforts to prove the existence of oil up here you will find with my Bible. S.M.C.
    I put the letter down and sat staring at the wall, picturing this strange, God-fearing man alone in that log cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, isolated by winter snow, carefully penning this letter to his unknown grandson. I could see him sitting alone at some rudely-made table, his Bible beside him, wrestling with the unaccustomed task of putting thoughts into words.
    I read it through again, more slowly. Every word carried weight—and his honesty and simplicity shone through it like a clean wind out of the high mountains.
    I had a feeling of guilt at having accepted so readily the verdict of the courts, at never having troubled to discover what he had done on leaving prison. And suddenly I found myself kneeling on the floor, swearing before a God whom I had scarcely troubled to get to know in the whole of my thirty-six years that whatever remained to me of life I would dedicate to the legacy my grandfather had left me.
    As I rose to my feet I