The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The Adventure with the Basket of Coin.

A
CHANCE FOR HIMSELF;

OR,

JACK HAZARD AND HIS TREASURE.

BY

J. T. TROWBRIDGE,

AUTHOR OF “JACK HAZARD AND HIS FORTUNES,” “LAWRENCE’S ADVENTURES,”

“COUPON BONDS,” ETC.

BOSTON:

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.

1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872,

BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.

CONTENTS.

A CHANCE FOR HIMSELF.

CHAPTER I
THE THUNDER-SQUALL.

On a high, hilly pasture, occupying the northeast corner of Peach Hill Farm, a man and two boys were one afternoon clearing the ground of stones.

The man—noticeable for his round shoulders, round puckered mouth, and two large, shining front teeth—wielded a stout iron bar called a “crow,” with which he pried up the turf-bound rocks, and helped to tumble them over upon a drag, called in that region a “stun-boat.” The larger of the boys—a bright, active lad of about fourteen years—lent a hand at the heavy rocks, and also gathered up and cast upon the drag the smaller stones, on his own account. The second lad—nearly as tall, and perhaps quite as old as the other—helped a little about the stones, but divided his attention chiefly between the horse that drew the drag, and a shaggy black dog that accompanied the party.

“Come, boy!” said the man,—enunciating the m and b by closing the said front teeth upon his nether lip,—“ye better quit fool’n’, an’ ketch holt and help. ’S go’n’ to rain.”

“Ain’t I helping?” retorted the smaller boy. “Don’t I drive the horse?”

“A great sight,—long’s the reins are on his back, an’ I haf to holler to him half the time to git up an’ whoa. Git up, Maje! there! whoa!—Jack’s wuth jest about six of ye.”

“O, Jack’s dreadful smart! Beats everything! And so are you, Phi Pipkin!” said the boy, sneeringly. “You feel mighty big since you got married, don’t ye?—I bet ye Lion’s got a squirrel under that big rock! I’m going to see!” And away he ran.

“That ’ere Phin Chatford ain’t wuth the salt in his porridge,—if I do say it!” remarked Mr. Pipkin. “I never did see sich a shirk; though when he comes to tell what’s been done, you’d think he was boss of all creation. Feel as if I’d like to take the gad to him sometimes, by hokey!”

“O Jack!” cried Phin, who had mounted a boulder much too large for Mr. Pipkin’s crow-bar, “you can see Lake Ontario from here,—’way over the trees there! Come and get up here; it’s grand!”

“I’ve been up there before,” replied Jack. “Haven’t time now. We shall have that shower here before we get half across the lot.”

“Come, Phin!” called out Mr. Pipkin, “there’s reason in all things! We’ll onhitch soon’s we git this load, an’ dodge a wettin’.”

“Seems to me you’re all-fired ’fraid of a wetting, both of ye,” cried Phin. “’T won’t hurt me! Let it come, and be darned to it, I say!”

This last exclamation sounded so much like blasphemy to the boy’s own ears, and it was followed immediately by so vivid a flash of lightning and so terrific a peal of thunder, from a black cloud rolling up overhead, that he jumped down from the rock and crouched beside it, looking ludicrously pale and scared; while the dog, dropping ears and tail, and whining and trembling with fear, ran first for Jack’s legs, then for Mr. Pipkin’s, and finally crouched by the boulder with Phin.

“You’re a perty pictur’ there!” cried Mr. Pipkin, with a loud, hoarse laugh. “Who’s afraid now?”

“Lion, I guess,—I ain’t,” said Phin, with an unnatural grin. “Only thought I’d sit down a spell.”

“It’s as cheap settin’ as standin’,—as the old hen remarked, arter she’d sot a month on rotten eggs, an’ nary chicken,” said Mr. Pipkin, whose spirits rose with the excitement of the occasion.

“There’s a good reason for the dog’s skulking,” said Jack. “He’s afraid of thunder, ever since Squire Peternot fired the old musket in his face and eyes. Hello! another crack!”

“I never see sich thunder!” exclaimed Mr. Pipkin. “Look a’ them rain-drops! big as bullets!”

“It’s coming!” cried Jack; and instantly the heavy thunder-gust swept over them.

“Onhitch!” roared out Mr. Pipkin, in the sudden tumult of rain and wind and thunder. “I must look out for my rheumatiz! Put for the house!”

“We shall get drenched before we are half-way to the house,” replied Jack, dropping the trace-chains. “I go for the woods!”

“I’ll take Old Maje, then,” said Mr. Pipkin.

But before he could mount, Phin, darting from the imperfect shelter of the rock, ran and leaped across the horse’s back. As he was scrambling to a seat, holding on by mane and harness, kicking, and calling out, “Give me a boost, Phi!” Mr. Pipkin gave him a boost, and lost his hat by the operation. That was quickly recovered; but before the owner, clapping it on his head, could get back to the horse’s side, the youthful rider, using the gathered-up reins for a whip, had started for the barn.

“Whoa! hold on! take me!” bellowed Mr. Pipkin.

“He won’t carry double—ask Jack!”

Flinging these parting words over his shoulder, the treacherous Phin went off at a gallop, leaving Mr. Pipkin to follow, at a heavy “dog-trot,” over the darkened hill, through the rushing, blinding storm.

Jack was already leaping a wall which separated the pasture from a neighboring wood-lot. Plunging in among the reeling and clashing trees, he first sought shelter by placing himself close under the lee of a large basswood; but the rain dashed through the surging mass of foliage above, and trickled down upon him from trunk and limbs.

Looking hastily about to see if he could better his situation, he cast his eye upon a prostrate tree, which some former gale had broken and overthrown, and from which the branches had mostly rotted and fallen away. It appeared to be hollow at the butt, and Jack ran to it, laughing at the thought of crawling in out of the rain. He put in his head, but took it out again immediately. The cavity was dark, and a disagreeable odor of rotten wood, suggestive of bugs and “thousand-legged worms,” repelled him.

“Never mind!” thought he. “I can clap my clothes in the hole, and have ’em dry to put on after the shower is over.”

He stripped himself in a moment, rolled up his garments in a neat bundle, and placed them, with his hat and shoes, within the hollow log.

“Now for a jolly shower-bath!” And, seeing an opening in the woods a little farther on, he capered towards it, laughing at the oddness of his situation, and at the feeling of the rain trickling down his bare back. A few more lightning flashes and tremendous claps of thunder, then a steady, pouring rain for about five minutes, in which Jack danced and screamed in great glee,—and the storm was over.

“What a soaking Phi and Phin must have got!” thought he. “And now won’t they be surprised to see me come home in dry clothes!”

The wind had gone down before; and now a flood of silver light, like a more ethereal shower, broke upon the still woods, brightening through its arched vistas, glancing from the leaves, and glistening in countless drops from the dripping boughs. A light wind passed, and every tree seemed to shake down laughingly from its shining locks a shower of pearls. Jack was filled with a sense of wonder and joy as he walked back through the beautiful, fresh, wet woods to his hollow log. He waited only a minute or two for his skin to dry, and for the boughs to cease dripping; then put in his hand where he had left his clothes. His clothes were not there!

Jack was startled: in place of the anticipated triumph of going home in dry garments, here was a chance of his going home in no garments at all! Yet who could have taken them? how was it possible that they could have been removed during his brief absence? “Maybe this isn’t the log!” He looked around. “Yes, it is, though!”

No other fallen trunk at all resembling it was to be seen in the woods. Then he stooped again, and thrust his hand as far as he could into the opening. He touched something,—not what he sought, but a mass of hair, and the leg of some large animal. He recoiled instinctively, with—it must be confessed—a start of fear.

CHAPTER II
WHAT JACK FOUND IN THE LOG.

Jack’s first thought was, that the creature, whatever it might be, was in the log when he placed his clothes there, and that it had afterwards seized them and perhaps torn them to pieces. Then he reflected that the hair he touched felt wet; and he said, “The thing ran to its hole after I put the clothes in, and it has pushed ’em along farther into the log. Wonder what it can be!” It was evidently much too large for a raccoon or a woodchuck: could it be a panther? or a young bear? “He’s got my clothes, any way! I must get him out, or go home without ’em!”

Naked and weaponless as he was, he naturally shrank from attacking the strange beast; nor was it pleasant to think of going home in his present condition. It was not at all probable that Mr. Pipkin and Phin would return to their work that afternoon; and he was too far from the house to make his cries for help heard. He resolved to call, however.

“Maybe I can make Lion hear. I wonder if he went home.” He remembered that the frightened dog was last seen crouching with Phin beside the rock, and hoping he was there still, he began to call.

“Lion! here, Lion!” and, putting his fingers to his mouth, he whistled till all the woods rang. Then suddenly—for he watched the log all the while—he heard a tearing and rattling in the cavity, and saw that the beast was coming out. Stepping quickly backwards, he tripped over a stick; and the next moment the creature—big and shaggy and wet—was upon him.

“You rogue! you coward! old Lion! what a fright you gave me! what have you done with my clothes? you foolish boy’s dog!” For the beast was no other than Lion himself; frightened from his retreat beside the boulder, he had followed his young master to the woods, and crept into the hollow of the log, after Jack had left his clothes in it.

Jack returned to the log, and with some difficulty fished out his garments. He unfolded them one by one, holding them up and regarding them with ludicrous dismay. Lion had made a bed of them; and between his drenched hide and the rotten wood, they had suffered no slight damage.

“O, my trousers!” Jack lamented. “And just look at that shirt! I’d better have worn them in fifty showers! So much for having a dog that’s afraid of thunder!” And he gave the mischief-maker a cuff on the ear.

Jack recovered everything except one shoe, which he could not get without going considerably farther than he liked into the decayed trunk.

“Here, Lion! you must get that shoe! That’s no more than fair. Understand?” And showing the other shoe, he pointed at the hole.

In went Lion, scratching and scrambling, and presently came out again, bringing the shoe in his mouth. Encouraged by his young master’s approval, and eager to atone for his cowardice and the mischief he had done, he went in again, although no other article was missing, and was presently heard pawing and pulling at something deep in the log.

“After squirrels, maybe,” said Jack, as, dressing himself, he stepped aside to avoid the volleys of dirt which now and then flew out of the opening.

He thought no more of the matter, until the dog came backwards out of the hole, shook himself, and laid a curious trophy down by the shoe. Jack looked at it, and saw to his surprise that it was a metallic handle, such as he had seen used on the ends of small chests and trunks, or on bureau-drawers. He scraped off with his knife some of the rust with which it was covered, and found that it was made of brass. At the ends were short rusty screws, which, upon examination, appeared to have been recently wrenched out of a piece of damp wood.

“It’s a trunk-handle,” said Jack. “Lion has pulled it off. And the trunk is in the log!”

He grew quite excited over the discovery, and sent the dog in again for further particulars, while he hurriedly put on his shoes. Lion gnawed and dug for a while, and at last reappeared with a small strip of partially decayed board in his mouth.

“It’s a piece of the box!” exclaimed Jack. “Try again, old fellow!”

Lion plunged once more into the opening, and immediately brought out something still more extraordinary. It was a round piece of metal, about the size of an American half-dollar; but so badly tarnished that it was a long time before Jack would believe that it was really money. He rubbed, he scraped, he turned it over, and rubbed and scraped again, then uttered a scream of delight.

“A silver half-dollar, sure as you live, old Lion!”

The dog was already in the log again. This time he brought out two more pieces of money like the first, and dropped them in Jack’s hand.

“Here, Lion!” cried the excited lad. “I’m going in there myself!”

He pulled the dog away, and entered the cavity, quite regardless now of rotten wood, bugs, and “thousand-legged worms.” His heels were still sticking out of the log, when his hand touched the broken end of a small trunk, and slid over a heap of coin, which had almost filled it, and run out in a little stream from the opening the dog had made.

Out came Jack again, covered with dirt, his hair tumbled over his eyes, and both hands full of half-dollars. He dashed back the stray locks with his sleeve, glanced eagerly at the coin, looked quickly around to see if there was any person in sight, then examined the contents of his hands.

“If there’s no owner to this money, I’m a rich man!” he said, with sparkling eyes. “There ain’t less than a thousand dollars in that trunk!”

To a lad in his circumstances, five-and-twenty years ago, such a sum might well appear prodigious. To Jack it was an immense fortune.

“And how can there be an owner?” he reasoned. “It must have been in that log a good many years,—long enough for the trunk to begin to rot, any way. Some fellow must have stolen it and hid it there; and he’d have been back after it long ago, if he hadn’t been dead,—or like enough he’s in prison somewhere. Here, Lion! keep out of that!” and Jack cuffed the dog’s ears, to enforce strict future obedience to that command. “Nobody must know of that log,” he muttered, looking cautiously all about him again, “till I can take the money away.”

But now, along with the sudden tide of his joy and hopes, a multitude of doubts rushed in upon his mind. How was he to keep his great discovery a secret until he should be ready to take advantage of it? The thief who had stolen the coin might be dead; but was it not the finder’s duty to seek out the real owner and restore it to him? Already that question began to disturb the boy’s conscience; but he soon forgot it in the consideration of others more immediately alarming.

“The thief may have been in prison, and he may come back this very night to find his booty! Or the owner of the land may claim it, because it was found on his premises.” And Jack remembered with no little anxiety that the land belonged to Mr. Chatford’s neighbor, the stern and grasping Squire Peternot. “Or, after all,” he thought, “it may be counterfeit!”

That was the most unpleasant conjecture of any. “I’ll find out about that, the first thing,” said Jack; and he determined to keep his discovery in the meanwhile a profound secret.

Accordingly, after due deliberation, he crept back into the log, and replaced the piece of the trunk, with the handle, and all the coin except one half-dollar; then, having partially stopped the opening with broken sticks and branches, he started for home.

CHAPTER III
“TREASURE-TROVE.”

Taking a circuitous route, in order that, if he was seen emerging from the woods, it might be at a distance from the spot where his treasure was concealed, Jack came out upon the pasture, crossed it, took the lane, and soon got over the bars into the barn-yard. As he entered from one side he met Mr. Pipkin coming in from the other.

“Hullo!” he cried, with a wonderfully natural and careless air, “did ye get wet?”

“Yes, wet as a drownded rat, I did! So did Phin,—and good enough for him, by hokey!” said Mr. Pipkin. “Where’ve you been?”

“O, I went into the woods. Got wet, though, a little; and dirty enough,—just look at my clothes!”

“I’ve changed mine,” remarked Mr. Pipkin. “Wasn’t a rag on me but what was soakin’ wet. I wished I had gone to the woods.”

“I’m glad ye didn’t,” thought Jack, as he walked on. “O,” said he, turning back as if he had just thought of something to tell, “see what I found!”

“Half a dollar? ye don’t say! Found it? Where, I want to know!” said Mr. Pipkin, rubbing the piece, first on his trousers, then on his boot.

“Over in the woods there,—picked it up on the ground,” said Jack, who discreetly omitted to mention the fact that it had first been laid on the ground by Lion.

“That’s curi’s!” remarked Mr. Pipkin.

“What is it?” said Phin, making his appearance, also in dry garments. He looked at the coin, while Jack repeated the story he had just told Mr. Pipkin; then said, with a sarcastic smile, “Feel mighty smart, don’t ye, with yer old half-dollar! I don’t believe it’s a good one.” And Master Chatford sounded it on a grindstone under the shed. “Couldn’t ye find any more where ye found this?”

“What should I want of any more, if this isn’t a good one?” replied Jack. “Here! give it back to me!”

“’Tain’t yours,” said Phin, with a laugh, pocketing the piece, and making off with it.

“It’s mine, if I don’t find the owner. ’Tisn’t yours, any way! Phin Chatford!”—Phin started to run, giggling as if it was all a good joke, while Jack started in pursuit, very much in earnest. “Give me my money, or I’ll choke it out of ye!” he cried, jumping upon the fugitive’s back, midway between barn and house.

“Here, here! Boys! boys!” said a reproving voice; and Phin’s father, coming out of the wood-shed, approached the scene of the scuffle. “What’s the trouble, Phineas? What is it, Jack?”

“He’s choking me!” squealed Phineas.

“He’s got my half-dollar!” exclaimed Jack, without loosing his hold of Phin’s neck.

“Come, come!” said Mr. Chatford. “No quarrelling. Have you got his half-dollar?”

“Only in fun. Besides, ’tain’t his”; and Phin squalled again.

“Let go of him, Jack!” said Mr. Chatford, sternly. Jack obeyed reluctantly. “Now what is it all about?”

“I’ll tell ye, deacon!” said round-shouldered Mr. Pipkin, coming forward. “It’s an old half-dollar Jack found in the woods; Phin snatched it and run off with ’t. Jack was arter him to git it back; he lit on him like a hawk on a June-bug; but he ha’n’t begun to give him the chokin’ he desarves!”

“Give me the money!” said the deacon. “No more fooling, Phineas!”

“Here’s the rusty old thing! ’Tain’t worth making a fuss about, any way,” said Phin, contemptuously. “Ho! Jack! you don’t know how to take a joke!”

“You do know how to take what don’t belong to you,” replied Jack. “Is it a good one, Mr. Chatford? That’s what I want to know.”

“Yes, I guess so,—I don’ know,—looks a little suspicious. Can’t tell about that, though; any silver money will tarnish, exposed to the damp. I’ll ring it. Sounds a little mite peculiar. Who’s got a half-dollar?”

“I have!” cried Phin’s little sister Kate.

In a minute her piece was brought, and Jack’s was sounded beside it on the door-stone; Jack listening with an anxious and excited look.

SOUNDING THE HALF-DOLLAR.

“No, it don’t ring like the other,” observed the deacon. Jack’s heart sank. “Has a more leaden sound.” His heart went down into his shoes. “It may be good, though, after all.” It began to rise again. “We can’t tell how much the rust has to do with it. Shouldn’t wonder if any half-dollar would ring a little dull, after it had been lying out in the woods as long as this has.” And Jack’s spirits mounted again hopefully. “I’m going over to the Basin to-night,” concluded the deacon. “I’ll take it to the watch-maker, and have him test it, if you say so.”

“I wish you would,” said Jack. “And—I’d like to know who it belongs to.”

“That’s right; of course you don’t want it if it’s a bad one, or if you can find the real owner to it.”

“I meant,” faltered Jack,—“of course I wouldn’t think of passing counterfeit money, and I don’t want another man’s money any how,—but—I found it on somebody’s land. Now I’d like to know if—that somebody—has any claim to it, on that account.”

“I don’t think he’d be apt to set up a claim, without he was a pretty mean man,” said the deacon.

“Not even if ’twas Squire Peternot?” said Mr. Pipkin. “Guess he’d put in for his share, if there was any chance o’ gittin’ on ’t!”

“Nonsense, Pippy! If ’twas a large sum, he might, but a trifle like this,—you’re unjust to the squire, Pippy.”

“I haven’t said it was the squire’s land. But suppose it was? And suppose it had been a large sum,” queried Jack, “could he claim it? What’s the law?” And, to explain away his extraordinary interest in the legal point, he added, laughingly, “Just for the fun of it, I’d like to know what he could do if he should try Phin’s joke, and set out to get my half-dollar away!”

“I really don’t know about the law,” the deacon was saying, when Lion barked. “Hist! here comes Peternot himself! Say nothing. I’ll ask him. He’s bringing his nephew over to see us.”

“He’s kind of adopted his nephew, hain’t he, sence he heard of his son’s death?” said Mr. Pipkin. “I’ve seen him hangin’ around there.”

“No; he only wants to get him into our school next winter.”

“Ho! a schoolmaster!” whispered Phin, jeering at the new-comer. “Say, Jack! I bet we can lick him!”

“Don’t look as if he had any more backbone ’n a spring chicken,” was Mr. Pipkin’s unfavorable criticism, as the gaunt and limping squire came to the door with his young relative.

“Good afternoon, neighbor,” said the deacon, shaking hands first with the uncle, then with the nephew. “You’ve come just at the right time. We’ve a legal question to settle. Suppose Jack, here, finds a purse of money on my place; no owner turns up; now whose purse is it, Jack’s or mine?”

“Your land—your hired boy—I should say, your purse,” said the squire, emphatically.

“But suppose you find such a purse on my land?”

“H’m! that alters the case. How is it, Byron? My nephew is studying law; he can tell you better than I can about it.”

Peternot thought this a good chance to bring the candidate for the winter’s school into favorable notice; and the candidate for the winter’s school made the most of his opportunity. He was a slender young man with a sallow complexion, a greenish eye, a pimpled forehead, and a rather awkward and studied manner of speaking. In rendering his opinion he was as prolix as any judge on the bench. He began with a disquisition on the nature of law, and finally, coming down to the case in point, said it would be considered a case of treasure-trove.

“What’s that?” Jack eagerly interrupted him.

“Treasure-trove is treasure found.”

“Then why don’t they say treasure found?”

“’Sh, boy!” said Mr. Chatford, good-naturedly, smiling at the youngster’s impatience of long-winded sentences and large words. “What’s the law of—treasure-trove, I believe you call it, Mr. Dinks?”

“I don’t think there’s any law on the subject,” replied the student of Blackstone, picking his teeth with a straw.

“No law! then how can such a case be decided?”

“Custom, which makes a sort of unwritten law, would here come in.”

“Well, what’s the custom?”

Thereupon Mr. Byron Dinks became prolix again, speaking of English custom, which, like English law, creates precedents for our own country. The meaning of his discourse, stripped of its technical phrases and tedious repetitions, seemed to be, that formerly, treasure-trove went to the crown; that in more modern times it was divided—in a case like this—between the finder and the man on whose premises it was found; but that he didn’t think any precedent had been established in America.

“We’re about as wise now as we were before,” remarked Phin’s elder brother Moses, standing in the kitchen door.

Mr. Chatford gave him a wink to remain silent, and said, “How are we to understand you, Mr. Dinks? To use your own expression, A finds money on B’s premises; now what would be your advice to B?”

“Supposing B is my client? I should advise him to get possession of the money, if he could. Possession is nine points of the law.”

“Well, but if he couldn’t get possession?”

“Then try to compromise for one half. Then for a quarter. Then for what he could get.”

“Very good. Now what would be your advice to A?”

“A is my client?”

“Yes, we’ll suppose so.”

Spitting and throwing away his straw, Mr. Byron Dinks said with a laugh, “My advice to A would be to pocket the money and say nothing about it; keep possession, any way; fight for it.”

“Thank you,” said the deacon, with quiet irony in his tones. “Now we know what the law is on this subject, boys.”

“I don’t see, for my part, that it differs very much from common sense,” remarked the simple-minded Mr. Pipkin, “only it takes more words to git at it.”

“I’m sure,” said the squire, “my nephew has given you all the law there is to govern such cases, and good advice to his clients. ’T ain’t his fault if people can’t understand him.”

“I guess we all understand the main point, now we’ve got at it,” said Deacon Chatford. “Hang on to your money, Jack.”

“You’ve got it,” said Jack, more deeply glad and agitated than any one suspected.

“So I have. Well, I’ll tell ye when I get home from the Basin to-night whether it’s good or not. Walk in, gentlemen.”

And the deacon entered the house with his guests.

CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH JACK COUNTS HIS CHICKENS.

Peternot and his nephew took their departure, after making a short call. Then the family sat down to the supper-table, and the merits and prospects of the candidate for the winter’s school were discussed in a manner that ought to have made his ears tingle. Then, while the boys harnessed the mare and brought her to the door, the deacon changed his clothes, and at last started for the Basin.

“Don’t forget to ask about that half-dollar!” said Jack, as he held the gate open for the buggy to pass through.

“Glad you reminded me of it,—I should have forgotten it,” replied the notoriously absent-minded deacon.

Jack wished he could have found some excuse for going with him, but he could not think of any.

“How can I wait till he gets back, to know about it?” thought he, as he stood at the gate and watched the buggy and Mr. Chatford’s black hat disappear over the brow of the hill.

His revery was interrupted by Moses, who, noticing the boy’s unusual conduct,—for Jack was ordinarily no dreamer when there was work to be done,—called out to him from the stable-door, “Say, Jack! you’ve got to go and fetch the cows to-night; Phin says he won’t.”

“It’s Phin’s turn,—but I don’t care, I’ll go.” And Jack set off for the pasture, glad of this opportunity to be alone, and to muse upon his wonderful discovery.

It was a beautiful evening. The air was fresh and cool, and perfectly delicious after the shower. The sky overhead was silver-clear, but all down the gorgeous west, banks and cliffs and floating bars of cloud burned with the hues of sunset. Jack’s heart expanded, as he walked up the lane; and there, in that lovely atmosphere, he built his airy castles.

“If I am a rich man,” thought he, “what shall I do with my money? I’ll put it out at interest for a year or two,—I wonder how much there is! That’ll help me get an education. Then I’ll go into business, or buy a little place somewhere, and I’ll have my horses and wagons and hired men, and—” O, what a vision of happiness floated before his eyes! riches, honors, friendships, and in the midst of all the sweetest face in the world,—the face of his dearest friend, Mrs. Chatford’s niece, Annie Felton.

Then he looked back wonderingly upon his past life. “I can hardly believe that I was nothing but a mean, ragged, swearing little canal-driver only a few months ago. Over yonder are the woods where the charcoal-burners were, that I wanted to hire out to, after I had run away from the scow,—the idea of my hiring out to them! Now here I am, treated like one of Mr. Chatford’s own boys, and—with all that money, if it is money,” he added, his heart swelling again with misgivings. “Go, Lion! go for the cows,” he said; and he himself began to run, calling by the way, “Co’, boss! co’, boss!” as if bringing the cows would also bring Mr. Chatford home, with his report concerning the half-dollar.

“He won’t be there, though, for an hour or two yet,” he reflected. “What’s the use of hurrying? I shall only have the longer to wait. I wonder if that log is just as I left it!” For Jack had still a secret dread lest the unknown person who had hidden the treasure so many years ago should now suddenly return and carry it away. “I’ll cut over there and take just one peep,” he said.

So, having started the cattle upon their homeward track, with Lion barking after the laggards, Jack leaped a fence, ran across the lot where he had been at work that afternoon with Mr. Pipkin and Phin when the shower surprised them, and was soon standing alone by the log in the darkening woods. The sticks which he had stuffed into the end of the hollow trunk were all in their place. And yet it seemed a dream to Jack, that he had actually found a box of money in that old tree,—that it was there now! He wanted to pull out the sticks and go in and make sure of his prize, but forbore to do so foolish a thing.

“Of course it’s there,” thought he. “And I’m going to take care that nobody knows where it is, till I’ve got it safe in my own possession; then who can say whether I found it on Mr. Chatford’s, or Squire Peternot’s, or Aunt Patsy’s land, if I don’t tell? Let Squire Peternot claim it if he can!”

Yet Jack longed to tell somebody of his discovery. “O, if I could only tell Annie Felton, and get her advice about it!” But Annie, who taught the summer school, and “boarded around,” was just then boarding in a distant part of the district. The next day, however, was Saturday; then she would come home to her aunt’s to spend the Sunday, and he could impart to her his burning secret.

Jack stayed but a minute in the woods, then, hurrying back, rejoined Lion, who was driving the cows into the lane. Arrived at the barn-yard, he took one of three or four pails which Mr. Pipkin had brought out from the pantry, and a stool from the shed, and sat down to do his share of the milking. He had always liked that part of the day’s work well enough before; but now with a secret feeling of pride and hope he said to himself, “Maybe I sha’n’t always be obliged to do this for a living!” And he wondered how it would seem to be a gentleman and live without work.

CHAPTER V
WAITING FOR THE DEACON.

The milk was carried to the pantry and strained; the candles were lighted, and the family sat in a pleasant circle about the kitchen table, while, without, the twilight darkened into night, and the crickets sang. There was Mr. Pipkin showing Phin how to braid a belly into his woodchuck-skin whiplash; Mrs. Pipkin (late Miss Wansey) paring a pan of apples, which she held in her lap; Moses reading the “Saturday Courier,” a popular story-paper in those days; little Kate, sitting on a stool, piecing a bed-quilt under her mother’s eye,—sewing together squares of different colored prints cut out from old dresses, and occasionally looking up to ask the maternal advice,—while Mrs. Chatford was doing some patch-work of a different sort, which certain rents in Phin’s trousers rendered necessary. Jack sat in the corner, silent, and listening for buggy-wheels.

“I hope you won’t go climbing over the buckles and hames, on to a horse’s back, in that harum-scarum way, another time,” said the good woman, in tones of mild reproof, to her younger son.

“’T was beginning to rain, and I couldn’t stop to think,” said Phin, laughing. “Could I, Phi?”

“I should think not, by the hurry you was in to hook my ride,” replied Mr. Pipkin, with reviving resentment. “That was a mean trick; and now jes’ see how I’m payin’ ye for it! Ye never could ’a’ got a decent-lookin’ belly into this lash, in the world, if ’twa’n’t for me.”

“That’s ’cause you’re such a good feller, and know so much!” said Phin, who could resort to flattery when anything was to be gained by it. “O, look, Mose! ain’t Phi doing it splendid? It’s going to be the best whiplash ever you set eyes on.”

Mr. Pipkin’s lips tightened in a grin around his big front teeth, and he worked harder than ever drawing the strands over the taper belly, while Phin, leaning over the back of his chair, whispered to Jack, “See what a fool I can make of him!”

At that Mrs. Pipkin, who had a keen ear and a sharp temper, flared up.

“Mr. Pipkin!”

“What, Mis’ Pipkin?”—meekly.

“You’ve worked long enough on that whiplash. He’s making fun of ye; and that’s all the thanks you’ll ever get for helping him. Take hold here and pare these apples while I slice ’em up.”

“In a minute. I can’t le’ go here jes’ now,” said Mr. Pipkin.

Whereupon Mrs. Pipkin laid down her knife and the apple she was paring, and looked at her husband over the rim of the pan in perfect astonishment.

“Mr. Pipkin! did you hear my request?”

“Yes, I heerd ye, but—”

“Mr. Pipkin,” interrupted Mrs. Pipkin, severely, “will you have the kindness to pare these apples? I don’t wish to be obliged to speak again!”

“What’s the apples fer,—sass?” said Mr. Pipkin, mildly.

“Pies; and you know you’re as fond of pies as anybody, Mr. Pipkin.”

“Wal, so I be, your pies. I declare, you do beat the Dutch with your apple-pies, if I do say it. There, Phin, I guess you can go along with the belly now. If it’s for pies, I’ll pare till the cows come hum!”

Thus disguising his obedience to his wife’s request, Mr. Pipkin took the pan and the knife, and Mrs. Pipkin recovered from her astonishment.

“Jack might pare the apples and let Phi braid!” Phin complained, getting into difficulties with his whiplash. “Darn this old belly!” And he flung it across the room.

“Phineas! you shall go to bed if I hear any more such talk,” said Mrs. Chatford, as sternly as it was in her kind motherly nature to speak. Then looking at Jack in the corner, “How happens it you are not reading your book to-night? It’s something new for you to be idle.”

“O, I don’t feel much like reading to-night,” said Jack, whose heart was where his treasure was.

“He’s thinking about his half-dollar, waiting to know if it’s a good one,” sneered Phin.

“Shouldn’t wonder if that half-dollar had dropped out of old Daddy Cobb’s money-box,” remarked Mr. Pipkin, taking a slice of apple.

“Mr. Pipkin! these apples are for pies!” said Mrs. Pipkin, in a warning voice.

“Daddy Cobb’s money-box! what’s that?” faltered Jack, fearing he had found an owner to the coin.

“What! didn’t ye never hear tell about Daddy Cobb’s diggin’ for a chist o’ treasure? Thought everybody’d heerd o’ that. There’s some kind o’ magic about it, hanged if I can explain jest what. The chist has a habit o’ shiftin’ its hidin’-place in the ground, so that though Daddy’s a’most got holt on ’t five or six times, it has allers slipped away from him in the most onaccountable and aggravatin’ manner. He has a way o’ findin’ where it is, by some hocus-pocus, hazel-wands for one thing; then he goes with his party of diggers at night,—for there’s two or three more fools big as him,—and they make a circle round the place, and one reads the Bible and holds the lantern while the rest dig, and if nobody speaks or does anything to break the charm, there’s a chance ’at they may git the treasure. Once Daddy says they had actooally got a holt on’t,—a big, square iron chist,—but jest’s they was liftin’ on’t out he jammed his finger, and said ‘Oh!’ and by hokey! if it didn’t disappear right afore their face an’ eyes quicker ’n a flash o’ lightnin’!”

Jack listened intently to this story. He did not believe that his treasure was the one Daddy Cobb had been digging for so long, but might it not elude his grasp in the same way?

CHAPTER VI
“ABOUT THAT HALF-DOLLAR.”

At every sound of wheels Jack started; and more than once he imagined he heard a wagon stop at the gate. Still no deacon; would he never return? Jack watched the clock, and thought he had never seen the pointers move so slowly.

Three or four times he went to the door to listen; and at last he walked down to the gate. It was bright, still moonlight, only the crickets and katydids were singing, and now and then an owl hooted in the woods or a raccoon cried.

“There’s a buggy coming!” exclaimed Jack. He could hear it in the distance; he could see it dimly coming down the moonlit road. “It’s Mr. Chatford!” He knew the deacon’s peculiar “Ca dep!” (get up) to the horse.

“That you, Jack?” said the deacon, driving in.

“Yes; thought I’d come down and shut the gate after you,” replied Jack.

Mr. Chatford stopped at the house, and Jack ran to help him take out some bundles. Then the deacon drove on to the barn, and Jack hurried after him. Still not a word about the half-dollar.

“You can go into the house; I’ll take care of Dolly,” said Jack.

“I’ll help; ’t won’t take but a minute,” said Mr. Chatford. “I’ve got bad news for you.”

“Have you?” said Jack, with sudden faintness of heart. “What?”

“For you and Lion,” added the deacon. “Duffer’s got another dog. He made his brags of him to-night. Said he could whip any dog in seven counties.”

“He’d better not let him tackle Lion!” said Jack.

“I told him I hoped he wouldn’t kill sheep, as his other dog did. Take her out of the shafts; we’ll run the buggy in by hand.”

The broad door of the horse-barn stood open. Jack led the mare up into the bright square of moonshine which lay on the dusty floor. There the harness was quickly taken off. Not a word yet concerning the half-dollar, which Jack was ashamed to appear anxious about, and which he began to think Mr. Chatford, with characteristic absent-mindedness, had forgotten.

“By the way, I’ve good news for you!” suddenly exclaimed the deacon.

Jack’s heart bounded. “Have you?”

“I saw Annie over at the Basin. She wants to go home to her folks to-morrow. Would you like to drive her over? She spoke of it.”

“And stay till Monday?” said Jack, to whom this would indeed have been good news at another time.

“Yes; start early, and get back Monday morning in time for her to begin school. Then she won’t go home again till her summer term is out.”

“Maybe—I’d better—wait and go then.” Jack felt the importance of early securing his treasure, and, having set apart Sunday afternoon for that task (“a deed of necessity,” he called it to his conscience), he saw no way but to postpone the long-anticipated happiness of a ride and visit with his dear friend. Yet what if the treasure were no treasure?

“As you please,” said the deacon, a little surprised at Jack’s choice. “Moses will be glad enough to go. See that she has plenty of hay in the rack, and don’t tie the halter so short as you do sometimes. Now give me a push here,”—taking up the buggy-shafts.

“Oh!” said Jack, as if he had just thought of something,—“I was going to ask you—about that half-dollar?”

“I didn’t think on ’t,” said Mr. Chatford, standing and holding the shafts while Jack went behind,—“not till I’d got started for home. Then I put my hand in my pocket for something, and found your half-dollar. Help me in with the buggy, and then I’ll tell you.”

The deacon drew in the shafts, Jack pushed behind, and the buggy went rattling and bounding up into its place.

“Did you go back?” asked Jack, out of breath,—not altogether from the effort he had just made.

The deacon deliberately walked out of the barn, and carefully shut and fastened the door; then, while on the way to the house, he explained.

“I had paid for my purchases out of my pocket-book, or I should have found that half-dollar before. However, as I had promised you, I whipped about and drove back to the goldsmith’s. He was just shutting up shop. I told him what I wanted. He went behind his counter, lit a lamp, looked at your half-dollar, cut into it, and then flung it into his drawer.”

“Kept it!” gasped out Jack.

“Yes; ’t was as good a half-dollar as ever came from the mint, he said. He gave me another in its place.”

Jack could not utter a word in reply to this announcement, which, notwithstanding his utmost hopes, astonished and overjoyed him beyond measure. As soon as he had recovered a little of his breath and self-possession, he grasped the deacon’s arm, and was on the point of exclaiming, “O Mr. Chatford! I have found a trunk full of just such half-dollars as that!”—for he felt that he must tell his joy to some one, and to whom else should he go? But already the deacon’s other hand was on the latch of the kitchen door, which he opened; and there sat the family round the table within.

“What is it, my boy?” said Mr. Chatford, as Jack shrank back and remained silent. “Oh! you want your half-dollar. Of course!” putting his hand into his pocket.

“I don’t care anything about that,” said Jack. He took it, nevertheless,—a bright, clean half-dollar in place of the scratched and tarnished coin he had given Mr. Chatford that afternoon.

Mr. Chatford stood holding the door open.

“Ain’t you coming in?”

“No, sir,—not just yet.”

Jack felt that he must be alone with his great, joyful, throbbing thoughts for a little while; and he wandered away in the moonlit night.

CHAPTER VII
HOW JACK WENT FOR HIS TREASURE.

In the forenoon of the following day Annie Felton dismissed her little school half an hour earlier than she was accustomed to do, and went to her Aunt Chatford’s house, to dine with her relatives and prepare for the long afternoon’s ride. She was greatly surprised when told that Jack was not to accompany her.

“Did Uncle Chatford speak to him about it?” she inquired of her aunt.

“Yes, but for some reason he didn’t seem inclined to go. That just suited Moses; he was glad enough of the chance.”

“Jack has found a half-dollar, and it has just about turned his head,” remarked Mrs. Pipkin.

“A half-dollar?” repeated Annie, wondering if such a trifle could indeed have so affected her young friend. No, she could not believe it. Then why had he willingly let slip an opportunity which she had thought he would be eager to seize?

Soon the men and boys came in to dinner,—Moses in high spirits, and with his Sunday clothes on; Jack jealous and unhappy.

“Why didn’t I leave that till another Sunday? or get it one of these moonlight nights?” he said to smile, and moved her lips with some sweet, inaudible meaning as she passed him; but Moses, good fellow though he was, cast upon him a look of contempt, and flourished his whip, driving proudly away beside his beautiful cousin.

“IT’S A GREAT SECRET.”

Jack, much as he thought of his hidden treasure, now for the first time in his life felt the utter worthlessness of money compared with the good-will and companionship of those we love,—a truth which it takes some of us all our lives to discover.

The sight of Annie Felton always stirred the nobler part of his nature; and now, going back to the house, he began to blame himself for having taken hitherto a purely selfish view of his treasure.

“All I’ve thought of has been just the good it was going to do me!” And he said to himself that he didn’t deserve the good fortune that had befallen him. Now to bestow it all upon her he felt would be his greatest happiness.

“And give some to you, precious little Kate!” was his second thought, as the gay little creature came running with Lion to meet him. In like manner his benevolence overflowed to all,—even to sharp-tongued Mrs. Pipkin,—after Annie Felton had stirred the fountain.

Twenty-four hours seemed long to wait. But the time for securing his treasure at last came round. He walked to church in the morning with Phin and Mr. Pipkin, but, without saying a word to anybody of his intentions, he at noon came home alone across the fields. He found, as he expected, Mrs. Chatford keeping house.

“Why, Jack!” said she, “why didn’t you stay to Sunday school and the afternoon services?”

“Don’t you want to go this afternoon?” replied Jack, evasively. “There will be some of the neighbors riding by, who will carry you. I’ll take care of the house.”

“You are very kind to think of me,” she said. “But I don’t think of going. You’d better eat your luncheon, and go right back.”

Jack longed to tell her everything on the spot, but feared she might disapprove of his going to bring home the treasure on the Sabbath. “After all’s over, then she’ll say I did right,” thought he. So he remarked, carelessly, “There’s a new minister to-day; I don’t like him very well. I guess I’ll go over and see Aunt Patsy a little while this afternoon.”

“If you do, I’ll send a loaf of bread and one of the pies we baked yesterday,” said Mrs. Chatford.

This was what Jack expected; and it gave him an excuse for carrying a basket. He took off his Sunday clothes, putting on an every-day suit in their place, lunched, and soon after started with Lion. He made a brief visit to the poor woman, and then set out for home by way of the woods.

On the edge of Aunt Patsy’s wood-lot he paused and looked carefully all about him. Not a human being was in sight. A Sabbath stillness reigned over all the sunlit fields and shadowy woods. There were Squire Peternot’s cattle feeding quietly in the pasture. A hawk was sailing silently high overhead. As he turned and walked on, two or three squirrels, gray and black, ran along the ground, disappearing around the trunks of trees to reappear in the rustling tops, and it was all he could do to keep Lion still.

“Look here, old fellow!” said he, “remember, you are not to bark to-day!”

From Aunt Patsy’s wood-lot he entered the squire’s, stepping over a dilapidated fence of poles and brush. The snapping of the decayed branches broke the silence; then, as he listened, he heard, far off, the bells for the afternoon service begin to ring. It was a strange sound, in that wildwood solitude, so shadowy and cool, and full of the fresh odors of moss and fern.

The bells were still ringing, and their faint, slow, solemn toll filled Jack’s heart with an indefinable feeling of guilt as he reached the log where his treasure was, and reflected upon the very worldly business that brought him there.

He did not reflect long,—he was too eager for the exciting work before him. Having walked on to the farther edge of the woods, to see that nobody was approaching from that direction, he returned, and began to pull out the sticks which he had stuffed into the end of the log.

“Everything’s just as I left it, so far,” thought he. “Wonder if my money-chest will dodge a fellow, like old Daddy Cobb’s!”

The opening clear, he put on an old brown frock which he had brought in the basket, laid his hat and coat on the ground, told Lion to watch them, and entered the log headforemost. The treasure, too, was where he had left it. His body stopped the cavity so that he could see nothing in its depths, but his groping hand felt the little trunk and the coin that had fallen out of its broken end.

“I’ll take this loose money out of the way first,” thought he; “then maybe I can move the trunk.”

He had nothing but his pockets to put the coin into, and those his frock covered. “I’ll find something better,” thought he. Backing out of the log, he pulled off his shoes, and re-entered with one of them in his hand. This he filled with all the half-dollars he could find about the end of the trunk, which he then tried to move.

“It’s stuck in a heap of rotten stuff here,” he muttered, “and I shall break it more if I pull hard on it.” So he resolved to empty it where it was.

He was half-way out of the log, bringing after him his shoe freighted with coin, when he was startled by a sudden bark from Lion. Leaving his shoe, he tumbled himself out upon the ground in fearful haste, to find a stray calf in the bushes the innocent cause of alarm. For keeping guard too faithfully poor Lion got a box on the ear.

After waiting awhile, to see if anything more dangerous than the calf was nigh, Jack brought out his shoe, poured its rattling contents into the basket, which he covered with his coat, and then went back into the log. This time he took both shoes in with him, which he filled, and emptied one after the other into the basket. Another journey, another, and still another, and he began to think there was more coin than he could carry home.

“I can get it away from here, though, so nobody can tell on whose land I found it,”—which he seemed to think a very important point to gain. “I’ll leave the little trunk where it is,—only take out the money.”

He had gone into the log for the last time, and got the last of the money, filling both shoes quite full, and was bringing them out with him,—he had actually got them out, leaving one at the entrance to the opening, and holding the other in his hands,—when Lion, notwithstanding his previous punishment, uttered a very low, suppressed growl.

Jack looked up from under his tumbled hair, and there, not three yards distant, with his horn-headed cane, regarding with grim amazement the boy and his shoes full of coin, stood Squire Peternot!