he Professor was crying when he encountered
the blackberry bushes. Luckily the Friend soon fell in with a like
temptation, and dismounted. He discovered something that spoiled his
appetite for berries. His coat, strapped on behind the saddle, had
worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book was gone. This
was serious business. For while the Professor was the cashier, and
traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the Friend represented
the sub-treasury. That very morning, in response to inquiry as to the
sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed, without counting, a roll of
bills. These bills had now disappeared, and when the Friend turned back
to communicate his loss, in the character of needy nothing not trimm'd
in jollity, he had a sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.

Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retrace
our steps we must. Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not half a
mile back. But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found. Probably,
then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up. But who was the man
on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone? Probably the coat worked
loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book had gone down-stream.
The number of probabilities was infinite, and each more plausible than
the others as it occurred to us. We inquired at every house we had
passed on the way, we questioned every one we met. At length it began
to seem improbable that any one would remember if he had picked up a
pocketbook that morning. This is just the sort of thing that slips an
untrained memory.

At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might be
either or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence, and a
group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, we unfolded
our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on a sorrel
horse. Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just ridden towards
Bakersville. If he had found the pocket-book, we would recover it. He
was an honest man. It might, however, fall into hands that would freeze
to it.

Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men in
the county who would keep it if they had picked it up. But the assembly
manifested the liveliest interest in the incident. One suggested Toe
River. Another thought it risky to drop a purse on any road. But there
was a chorus of desire expressed that we should find it, and in this
anxiety was exhibited a