in one to try to get a quarter of a dollar in this day of postal
currency. At length I stooped down as if to adjust something about my
boot, and slipped the object of my solicitude into my hand, unseen, as
I believed.

"What is it?" asked the conductor.

"What's what?" said I, with affected smartness.

"What you just found," he persisted.

"I was pulling my pants down over my boot," I prevaricated.

"That's all humbug," said he; "you found something in the car, and it
belongs to the company."

"Prove that I found any thing," said I, angrily.

"Young man," said the voice of the big man who was leaning on his
cane, still looking at me, "it is as bad to lie about a thing as it is
to steal. I saw you pick something up, and to me it had the appearance
of money." He struck his cane on the floor as he spoke, and grasped it
firmer, as if to clinch his remark.

"Yes," said the conductor; "and we don't want nothing of the kind
here, and what's more, we won't have it; so hand over."

"My fine fellow," said I, prepared for a crisis, "I know my rights,
and, without admitting that I have found any thing, I contend that if
I had, in this public conveyance, which is as public as the street to
him who pays for a ride in it, that which I find in it is mine after I
have made due endeavour to find out its owner. Money being an article
impossible to identify, unless it is marked, if I had found it, it
would have been mine--according to Whately, Lycurgus, and Jew Moses."

"Hang your authorities," said he; "I don't know any thing about 'em,
but this I know,--that money belongs to the Touchandgo Horse Railroad
Company, and I'll have it. Ain't I right, Mr. Diggs?" addressing a
gentleman with glasses on, reading the Journal.

"I think you are," replied he, looking at me over the top of his
spectacles, as though he were shooting from behind a breastwork;
"I think the pint is clear, and that it belongs to the company to
advertise it and find out the owner."

"Well," I put in, "suppose they don't find the owner; who has it?"

"The company, I should think," said he, folding his paper preparatory
to getting out.

"That's it," said the conductor, taking up the thread as he put the
passenger down; "and now I want that money." He looked ugly.

"What money?" I queried.

"The money you picked up on the floor."

I saw that I was in a place of considerable difficulty, involving a
row on one side and imputation of villany on the other, a