The nimble dollar, with other stories

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THe NmsxieE DoLLuAR

A Victim or Twins

THe ReEwARD OF HEROES THe “Story” or LEON PRINCE JOE

II

On the afternoon on which Mr. Josselyn made the momentous discovery that, when the dollar of 1804 was taken from his till, he was robbed not merely of one but of eight hundred dollars, Bill Young was walking homeward through the thick dust.

Bill was an estimable youth of some eighteen summers. His tall, lanky, loose-jointed form was clothed in a pair of old brown trousers supported by a single suspender-strap, a flannel shirt of no particular color, a pair of cowhide boots, and a wide-brimmed hat of coarse straw. His big, dirty, large-knuckled hands swung loosely at his sides like the swingels of flails. His head was bent downward as if he saw in the road something particularly interesting. His face was thin, his blue eyes sharp, shifty, and deep set. His nose was prominent and aquiline, his chin retreating, and his low forehead was thickly overhung with long, sandy hair. His face, neck, and hands were brick-red from sunburn. His expression was not prepossessing, and there was something not quite honest-looking about the rounded shoulders and hanging head. He was the terror of the small boys, whom he bullied and tortured as often as he could lay hands upon them. When they descried him from afar, they hid; when they came upon him suddenly, they turned and fled.

The estimable William, by the exercise of such talents as he had, had won the proud position of leading reprobate of the community. His father, a weak man, had long resigned all claim to that bad eminence in favor of his son. In spite of his success, however, Bill was not happy. He knew himself hated and feared by the young people, despised and distrusted by the elders. He bore a grudge against the whole community, and that he could not pay it in full was distressing to his honest nature. Such is the disadvantage of a greatness such as Bill’s.

However, at the moment, William was feeling pretty well satisfied with himself, for he had a dollar in his pocket which did not belong to him. It was the dollar of 1804.

Now he would have been in the seventh heaven of guilty bliss, and somewhere in the woods, had he known the real value of that dollar. But William’s luck — which he proclaimed everywhere was “agin him” — denied him this knowledge. What satisfaction he had, moreover, was lessened by fear of discovery. He might be sent to the county jail, if it were known that he was the thief. Though Mr. Josselyn, in his opinion, was “pretty small potatoes”? in point of wit and executive vigor, and the sheriff himself more powerful in his own conceit than in fact, they might possibly by laying their heads together manage to trap even so talented and astute a youth as himself.

As he trudged along, weighing his chances, his ease-loving disposition suggested to him that he would be more comfortable without his boots. So he stepped to the wall, seated himself and, with some grunting, succeeded in pulling them off. This proceeding disclosed the fact that stockings formed no part of William’s summer wardrobe. Taking the boots by their straps in one hand, he resumed his walk barefooted.

Over the top of the hill in front of him — for in Vermont you are always either going up a hill or going down one — now appeared a man in a buggy. Bill recognized him at once as $i Gordon. It was indeed the sheriff returning from an unsuccessful visit to the farm of the Youngs in search of Bill himself.

William paused a moment. He was tempted to take to the woods. But he reflected with those quick wits of his, which were so great an ornament of his character, that the chances were very much against Gordon knowing anything about the theft so soon, that Gordon had probably seen him as quick as he had seen Gordon, and that, if so, his taking to the woods might be deemed a _ suspicious circumstance. At any rate, the proceeding would be unworthy a man of boldness and resolution.

Accordingly, he walked confidently on, swinging his boots in his hand, as who should say, Behold the trustfulness of an innocent mind! But first he shifted the dollar from his right to his left pocket, where he held it firmly in his closed hand. And he kept his sharp eyes stealthily on the sheriff. With that caution which ever goes with true courage, he felt it wise to be prepared for emergencies.

“Whoa there!” said Gordon to his horse, as he came near. ‘Hello, Bill,’ he added to Young.

“Hello,” said Bill gruffly, without stopping.

“Hold on there,” said the sheriff, ‘“‘don’t you be in sich a rush. ’T ain’t chore-time, and your house ain’t on fire, for I just come from there.”

Bill stopped and faced the sheriff.

“Jest step back here a mite,” said Gordon. “YT want to talk to ye a little. What ye so unsociable about, anyhow? Ye ain’t afraid of the sheriff, be ye?”

Bill, thus urged, stepped quite close to the wheel, and stood there, looking sullen. He began to swing his boots against the tire. It gave him an excuse not to look the sheriff in the eye. His hand in his pocket clutched his ill-gotten dollar tightly.

“What d’ ye want?” he said.

“Why, ye see,” said the sheriff elaborately, “I hain’t seen ye for so long that I kind of thought Id like a little talk with ye, about matters and things. Been way up to your house to see ye, too, and it’s tur’ble hot driving, this weather. Hard on me, and hard on the hoss. I hate to stop him right here in the sun so, seeing he’s all of a lather. Why don’t ye jump in and ride back to town with me, and then we kin talk sort of comfortable. What d’ ye say?”

“T hain’t got nothing to do in town, not as I knows on,”’ said Bill.

By this time, the sheriff had looked Bill completely over. He had noticed that the boy kept his left hand stubbornly in his pocket. He could guess, too, from the bulge there that the hand was not open but closed. “Humph,” said he to himself, “got it right there in his pocket, Ill bet. Take a smarter chap than him to fool Si Gordon, I guess.”

“Oh, I guess ye ’ve got suthin’ t’ git at th’ store,” he said aloud, with an air of much friendly insistence. He felt so sure of that dollar that he was inclined to joke Bill a little. ‘Your ma, now, she wanted some sody or suthin’, I guess. You better go back and git it, seems though you had. Like ’s not she ’s depending on it for biscuit to-night.”

“She don’t want no sody,” said Bill, inwardly uneasy, but preserving his unmoved, if sullen air.

“Well, then, it’s saleratus or something,” insisted the sheriff. ‘‘The women folks is always a-wanting something of the sort. If she didn’t say anything about nothing, why then you can kind of surprise her with it. These little agreeable surprises is allers welkim to the women.”

“T don’t know as I want to go to town,” said Bill. :

“Well, I guess ye dew,” said the sheriff, with an imperative inflection. He had amused himself enough now, and was ready to take his captive and the dollar into possession. He felt proud of his day’s work. ‘Come, take your hand out of your pocket, and hop in. Come, in with ye!”

Bill cast an eye furtively about the landscape. He noted that as he faced the buggy, he stood directly in line with the boundary wall between the Snow and the Hodgkins farm, and that if he should face up the road, he would bring into line a maple-tree that stood in its first slight curve and an elm in the pasture beyond.

He slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket, and climbed into the buggy. The two then rode away together toward the village, and both were laughing in their sleeves, —the sheriff at the neatness of his capture, and Bill at the uselessness of it. For the dollar went not with the sheriff. No! there was a hole in William’s pocket, and when that estimable youth withdrew his hand, the coin had slipped down his trouser-leg and fallen noiselessly in the dust, where it had been covered by a deft movement or so of his foot as he stepped into the buggy. Now, as the possession of the dollar was the only thing that could connect William with its theft, the sheriff — poor, deceived man! — was not the one who had the better reason for laughing.

The road now lay baking in the hot afternoon sun undisturbed for a long time by horse or man. Its dust was stirred only by a partridge which came forth circumspectly from the wood on the right to “dust” in it like any tame, plebeian hen, and by a squirrel which darted across it. Nor was there any sound to be heard except the slight, delicate carol of some warblers in the treetops, the whines of a complaining catbird in a tangle of wild grapevine, and the sweetly melodious whistle of a field sparrow perched on a mullein stalk in the warm, boulder-strewn pasture on the left.

At length into this quiet burst Johnny Snow. He had forgotten the sorrow of his forced departure from the store even as he had forgotten the potatoes he was to hoe. He had been a long while on the way, quite long enough to forget these things. He had found two bird’s-nests, both “old,” chased a chipmunk into the wall, eaten unlimited raspberries, and searched a spruce-tree for gum. These be diversions to heal the wound of sorrow and to hush the voice of duty!

At present, both arms were bent at the elbow and gyrating rapidly, his downward bent bare toes were kicking up the dust, and from his mouth came the chough, chough, chough of an overworked locomotive on an up-grade. Mingling fact and fancy, he considered himself to be the passenger express three hours late. He stopped his puffing occasionally to give utterance to a very good imitation of the sound of a steam whistle. All this would seem to be occupation enough for one boy, but, while his arms gyrated, his feet kicked up dust, and his mouth puffed or whistled, his mind was largely occupied with thoughts of a turkey hen at home whom he suspected of having stolen a nest. He intended to find that turkey’s nest. He’d put a bell round her neck if necessary, and then he ’d see what she *d do.

He was thus occupied when he came directly abreast of the boundary wall between the Snow and the Hodgkins farm and directly in line with the maple-tree that stood in the first slight bend of the road and the elm in the pasture beyond.

Here he hit his toe on aati ae hard which hurt.

“Ouch,” he said, standing on one leg, and erasping the injured toe in his hand. “Train wreckers been a-putting a boulder on the track. Ill have them jailed before night, — see if I don’t!”

His glance wandered over the road in search of the “boulder.” In the dust before him he saw a white gleam. He put his foot down at once, and hurriedly picked up the shining disk.

“Whoop!” he shouted after the first look at his prize; and with the dollar clutched tightly in one hand, he turned five cartwheels in succession up the road. The cartwheels made him somewhat dizzy. In attempting the sixth, he sat down hard in the middle of the road. Somewhat calmed by this expenditure of energy, and by the shock to his system in which it ended, he opened his fist to give more careful examination to the dollar. He looked at the date: it was 1804.

At this, he jumped to his feet, turned five more cartwheels, danced about, throwing his bare legs violently in every direction, and uttering a succession of Indian warcries. A cow in the pasture raised bland, astonished eyes upon him, and in her consternation let the grass drop from her foolishly open mouth. She gazed at him attentively a moment, then wheeled, tossed her heels and tail high in air, and started on a bee line for the far end of the pasture. The hawk, sailing calmly about far above, must have thought that the small human being below was having a new and elaborate kind of fit, and observed him with scientific curiosity, but without sympathy.

Johnny, however, saw neither the cow nor the hawk. All at once seized with the conviction that the dollar could not be that of 1804, he abruptly stopped his shouting and hopping, and examined the coin again. There was no mistake; it was the dollar of 1804.

Sure of this momentous fact, he started to run home as fast as his legs could carry him. He soon got out of breath, however, and had to fall into a walk. But this he still had energy enough to enliven now and then either with a joyous kick or with an ear-piercing yell.

What could he not do with eight hundred dollars! Raise the mortgage on the farm, which was a paltry four hundred, for one thing. Then his mother would regard him as a man, and let him have coffee at breakfast! Then his grandfather would look upon him as upon one whose opinion is valuable, and ask his advice whether to keep the meadow for grass, or turn it to corn and potatoes. Corn and potatoes he decided would be best, and his grandfather said the decision was wise. Then, too, he would buy his sister Susan the cabinet organ for which she was pining, and then she would look up to him eratefully ever after. And, well—he might perhaps get something for himself, too—a base-ball bat and a “store” ball, he concluded, would please him more than anything else. If he had these, he would certainly be elected captain of the nine! The rest he would put in the bank, so that he might be rich when he was old. Croesus never felt so wealthy as he!

At this point in his pleasing reverie, he was met by a double carriage full of city-folk from the camp near the pond. With these people he was great friends. However, with a vague sense that to exult publicly was unworthy a man, he straightened his shining face into as completely indifferent an expression as possible. He concluded not to tell about the dollar. No! he would talk to them as equal to equal, as one millionaire may talk to another. He might even be a little haughty, and leave them impressed and wondering at his manly independence.

“Hullo, Johnny,” called Mr. Dana, who was driving, “how about the cartwheels. Still turning, eh?”

Johnny tried to preserve a dignified gravity, but the attempt ended in an intelligent grin.

“Miss Day,” said Mr. Dana, turning to address a pretty young lady in the back seat, “vou ’re a newcomer at Camp Lookout. You’re unfamiliar with our young friend Johnny’s accomplishments. Johnny, turn a few cartwheels for the lady.”

Johnny stole a glance at Miss Day, caught her eye, and was plunged into confusion. He grinned harder than ever, and felt that haughtiness was beyond him. But he showed not the slightest intention of turning cartwheels.

“Come,” said Mr. Dana, “we ’Il pass round the hat.”

A temporary gleam came into Johnny’s eyes, but was immediately extinguished by the thought of the eight hundred dollars in his pocket. What were pennies to him, now? Still, it might be well to consider an offer.

“Pass round the hat first!” said Johnny, with an air of business caution.

There was much laughter in the carriage over this. The pretty young lady was particularly delighted; her eyes fairly danced. John looked at her furtively. He was too happy to feel much hurt, but he wondered what she thought was so funny. There was nothing laughable about his remark that he could see. He would show her pretty soon that he was a boy not to be laughed at.

“All right,” said Mr. Dana. “But if you always drive bargains like that, you’ll own the store some day.”

Mr. Dana spoke that as if it were a warning. Johnny reflected that city-folks were queer, and excused him. Meanwhile, Mr. Dana took off his hat, dropped a dime into it, and passed it to the others.

“There,”’ said he, when the other campers had all put some coin or other into it, “‘we ’ve collected the cash, but you know you can’t have the money till you ’ve earned it!”

“Lemme see how much,” said Johnny. There was new laughter at this; but Johnny was undisturbed. His turn was coming. Mr. Dana held the hat down so that Johnny might look within. This he did with great gravity, and counted the money. There were two dimes and two nickels, — thirty cents.

Thirty cents were not worth working for by a capitalist — he could n’t turn cartwheels for that. No, his first plan was best.

“TY hain’t got no use for thirty cents,” said he, with much scorn.

“What, isn’t it enough!” exclaimed Mr. Dana, rather hurt by Johnny’s ungraciousness. Pretty Miss Day began to look grave.

“Oh, yes, it’s enough, I guess,” said Johnny. Then he added with comical pompousness, “I guess I kin afford to do ’em for nothing, seeing it’s you.”’

And he did. He turned four up the road in beautiful style and four more coming back. Then he stopped breathless and smiling.

Cries of “Good, good” came from the carriage, and all clapped their hands. Miss Day clapped hers particularly hard.

“Here, Johnny,” cried Mr. Dana, “you’d better take the money. It’s yours, you’ve earned it.”

Pretty Miss Day looked as if she thought so, too, and the others added their entreaties. He stood out some time against their solicitations; but finally yielded and pocketed the money. His friends in the carriage made it

THE NIMBLE DOLLAR ST a personal matter, and he felt that he would be impolite if he refused. By way of thanks he turned a few more cartwheels, and the carriage went on. But so long as the carriage remained in sight, he turned cartwheels back and forth across the road. He would not have admitted it, but he was “showing off” for the benefit of Miss Day, who was looking back at him and smiling.

When at length the carriage disappeared, he turned and ran hard all the way home, so full of joy that it seemed to him he would leap out of his skin. He scattered the hens in the yard in every direction, gave the back door a great slap with his hand which swung it violently open, and burst into the kitchen.

“Oh, ma!” he cried, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

Alas, those cartwheels! His eyes grew big, his face solemn, his jaw dropped. There was not a coin of any size in either pocket!

TLY

WitH many sobs, Johnny told his mother, grandfather, and sister Sue —they were the whole of his family, for his father was dead, —how he had found the dollar of 1804 and then lost it. Even amid his tears he found a certain solace in the breathless wonder with which Susan listened and in the undeniable interest of his mother; for nothing pleased him more than to be considered a person of importance. His grandfather, however, listened very grimly, and when the tale was told, talked to him plainly.

“What d’ye calkilate doing with that dollar, anyhow?” said the deacon; “*’t wa’n’t yourn.”’

“Findings havings,” said Johnny, who thought it enough to bear a loss of eight hundred dollars without having a lecture from his stern old grandfather also.

“No, ’tain’t nuther,’’ the deacon contradicted pitilessly, ‘“‘not onless what ye find was yourn in the fust place. Somebody lost that dollar, and it belongs to him, jest as much as it ever did. Hain’t ye got sense enough to see that?”

“But if he’s lost it, how can it be his?” asked Johnny.

“That don’t make no difference,” said the deacon. “If I lose my cow out of the north pastur, and old man Young comes acrost her in the woods, is that cow his’n?”’

Johnny shook his head dolefully.

“Wall,” continued the deacon, “I happen to know that that there dollar b’longs to Josselyn up to the store. It was took from his till by some scamp or other. The sheriff, he ’rested Bill Young, but could n’t make no ease agin him. I guess probably Bill dropped that dollar right where you found it; seems, likely he did, anyhow. In the morning, — it’s too dark now, — you go out and look for ’t, and if you find it, you march right off instanter and take it to Josselyn. P’raps he ll give ye a stick o’ candy for a-bringing on it to him.”

Oddly enough, the suggested reward did not strike Johnny as adequate consolation.

He howled afresh. Johnny’s mother, who was a wise woman, merely kissed him, and told him he ’d better eat his supper and go to bed. This advice Johnny took. He wept himself to sleep; but the next morning awoke in his usual good spirits, with complacent thoughts of the glory of being the one to return the missing dollar to its rightful owner. The stick of candy even seemed less an insult than it had done on the previous night. Now that the keenness of his disappointment had passed, he saw plainly enough that the dollar was not in any case his, for Johnny was as honest a boy as any.

He and his grandfather went over the road carefully with fine rakes. But they did not find the lost dollar.

They were not early enough. Tim Mansfield, who was a great fisherman, and therefore a very early riser, had passed that way before them, and the dollar now reposed in his pocket. He was doing battle royal with his conscience; for he, too, was to a certain extent a believer in the common boyish dogma, “findings havings,” and that principle he was now using as a club to bring his sense of dishonesty to terms. In his heart of hearts he was perfectly sure that the dollar which he had found was the dollar which Josselyn had lost; but he persuaded himself to believe that he believed, first, that since he had found it, it was his; and second, that the dollar was not Josselyn’s dollar at all, but another one just like it. So it stayed in his pocket, and he went to school feeling very uneasy, was very quiet, and avoided the boys as much as possible.

But he could not help drawing near when he heard Johnny Snow in the midst of a wondering crowd telling his adventure of the day before, and of his and his grandfather’s unavailing search for the dollar that morning. After listening to Johnny’s highly dramatic narrative, Tim had to argue very subtly indeed to make himself believe that he believed that the dollar belonged rightfully to him. .

At recess, Tim saw Si Gordon coming toward the schoolhouse. He pretended — even to himself —that he was ill, and went to the rear of the building, where he lay down behind a tree. He felt very queer, and looked very pale. When the teacher rang her bell for the pupils to come in, he had to reappear, and did so very nervously in the full expectation that the sheriff would pounce upon him at the door, handcuff him, and lead him immediately to jail. He jumped with terror on meeting the teacher suddenly in the doorway, and grew very red when he saw his mistake. Johnny Snow sat beside him, and in the course of the afternoon held up his slate for Tim to see. On it was written “Old Gordon has been here about that dollar.”

Tim worried over that message all the rest _ of the session. Did Johnny know he had the dollar, and was he trying to warn him? Or did he merely suspect that he had the dollar, and write the message to see if he would “start”? on reading it? Or did Johnny proffer it merely as interesting information? He rejected this last explanation as too unlikely. He was inclined to think the second the most probable. Supposing it the right one, to how many of the boys had Johnny communicated his suspicion? He looked about and saw that none of the boys were paying him the least attention. The circumstance struck him as suspicious. He concluded that they were try-

| ing to lull him into a false sense of security the better to observe him. The sheriff had probably cautioned them not to let him suspect anything. In the spelling class, — in which he stood at the head, — he was preoccupied with the idea that the teacher knew, too. ‘Timothy — chair,”’ said the teacher.

’ said Tim, in a

“Chair, e-h-a-r-e, chair,’ daze.

‘““Wrong,” said the teacher.

““C-h-e-a-r,” said Tim.

“Wrong again,” said the teacher; “go to the foot.”

When school was over, Tim had but one thought, —to hide that dollar. He sneaked away by himself into the woods. There every squirrel that chattered frightened him, every twig that snapped under his foot made him jump. And he could find no place which seemed secure enough a hiding place for the dollar. Finally he shoved it as far as he could reach into a hollow log, and then ran home in a fright with an imaginary constable at his heels.

But he felt no happier now that he was rid of the coin. He felt sure that some one wandering in the woods would find it. That the discoverer would know he hid it there, he had no doubt. He was not at home an hour before he found himself unwillingly retracing his steps to the woods to assure himself that the dollar was still where he left it. For a moment his heart leaped into his mouth when, on sticking his arm into the log, his fingers did not instantly close upon the hidden coin.

After supper, his mother sent him on an errand to the store. He fairly crawled toward the village. When within half a mile of it, his courage almost wholly gave out. So he made a detour across the fields, and came in behind the church. Once there, he peeked round the corner. Darkness had fallen, but a lamp with a tin reflector behind it was fastened at one side of the store door. In its light, he could see two or three men sitting on the porch. He thought he recognized one of them as Gordon. Miserable and trembling, he waited for Gordon to go away. But Gordon, if indeed it were he, sat stolidly in his chair, and would not budge.

Tim lay there behind the church, and thought and thought. What should he do?

eis 5 Ee

He did not dare go home with his errand unaccomplished. He did not dare go to the store while the sheriff remained on the porch. Yet one or the other he must do, at once.

Could not he return the dollar to Mr. Josselyn? No! the storekeeper would ask where he got it, and why he did not return it at once. He would not dare to carry it to the store in his pocket; he might be taken with it on his person, and his statement that he came to return it to the owner not be believed. He was in despair.

All at once, he thought he saw a way out of his difficulties. Wouldn’t it be enough if he put the dollar into Josselyn’s house or store? He could do that, perhaps, without being seen, and no one would ever know that he had had it at all. He very hopefully planned how to do this. With the very thought of restitution, he grew happier and bolder.

Finally, he jumped up, and running back into the wood, got the dollar from the log. Then he skirted the village in a wide circle, and approached Mr. Josselyn’s house, which stood next the store, from the rear. The family, he found, was in the back part of the house. The front was unlighted. With infinite caution, he wriggled himself like an Indian through the long grass of the Josselyns’ yard until he came to the front of the house. Then, behind one of the tall posts of the fence, he stood up cautiously to reconnoitre. <A slight noise in the house sent him flat in the grass again, his heart beating wildly. Little by little his courage came-back. Very stealthily he rose to his feet. This time he saw a light, first in one window, then in the next, as if some one with a lamp were coming to the front door. Obeying a sudden impulse, he reached up, put the dollar on the top of the post, and, as fast as he could go, fled home. He had forgotten his errand, after all. When questioned by his mother, he muttered something about playing tag, was sharply scolded, and sent to bed. There he lay awake in uneasy thought. As was natural, his imperfect restitution brought him only imperfect ease of conscience. Suppose some one else than Josselyn found that dollar?