house down." Captain Philo, who had laid
down his three-cornered sail-needle, to listen to this exciting story,
readjusted the leather thimble that covered his palm, and began to sew
again. Uncle Silas, sitting near the water door, in his brown overalls
made with a breast-apron and suspender-straps, looked out at the boats.
A silence fell on the company.

It was broken by Calvin Green.

"A man was telling me rather a curious story, the other night," he said.
"I was just explaining to him exactly how 't was that David Prince lost
his money, and so he told this:--

"There was a boy that was clerk in a store, and one day they sent him
over to the bank to git some money. It was before the war, and the bank
gave him twenty ten-dollar gold pieces. But when he got back to the
store there was one short. The boy hadn't nothin' to say. He admitted
he had n't dropped none, because he 'd put 'em in a leather bag where
he could n't lose one without he lost all, and the cashier knew _he_ had
n't made any mistake. The storekeeper he heard the story, and then he
put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and says he, 'I don't know what to
make o' this; but I believe this boy,' says he, 'and we 'll just drop
it, and say no more about it.' So it run along, and the next day that it
rained, one of the clerks in the store took down an old umberella, and,
come to unfurl it, out falls a ten-dollar gold piece. Seems that the boy
had that umberella that day, and hooked it on to the counter in the
bank, by the handle, and one of the coins must have slid off into it
when he was countin' 'em, and then he probably did n't spread the
umberella coming back. And, as this man said that was telling me, it
don't do to bet too much on suspicion. Now, only for that Jew's being
such a hard character, according to the newspapers, I should be loath to
charge him with taking David's money; I should say David might have lost
it somewhere else."

Nobody spoke. Captain Bennett whistled softly.

"I never felt so bad in my life," continued Green, "as I did when he
missed his money. When we come up into the depot he was telling me a
kind of a comical story about old Jim Torrey, how he wanted to find out
if all his hens was laying, or if any of 'em was disposed to shirk, and
he got him a pass-book ruled in columns, and opened a ledger
account with every hen, by a name he give her; and we got up to the
ticket-window, and he put his hand into his breast-pocket for his
w