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Read Ebook: A Chance for Himself; or Jack Hazard and His Treasure by Trowbridge J T John Townsend
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Ebook has 1471 lines and 61249 words, and 30 pages
"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.
"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!"
"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.
"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 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!"
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