THE CANVAS BAG
Half an hour after Hegan had followed his confederate from the schooner
to jail, Jack was lying in bed, joking with the doctor who was
bandaging his wound, the pain in which was much easier now that it had
been properly dressed.
“How about the Ferry?” the lad asked. “Mayn’t I get up to-morrow
morning?”
“No,” replied the man of medicine firmly. “You’ll have to stay put
for at least a couple of days. Fortunately it’s only a slight wound,
but you must give it a chance to heal. You’ll be all right in a week,
anyway. Now, promise me you won’t try to stand on that game leg till
Tuesday morning.”
“All right, if you insist,” replied Jack. “Hello, Dad, is that you?” he
added, raising his voice as the street door opened. He had not seen
his father since returning from the astonishing trip in the _Sea-Lark_,
for Mr. Holden had gone off on his usual Sunday-morning walk.
Pantingly Mr. Holden hurried up the stairs.
“What’s wrong with you, boy?” he asked as he entered the room. “I’ve
just heard outside that you’ve been shot.”
“It’s only a scratch,” replied Jack. “The doctor says I’ll probably be
able to get up to-morrow.”
“Tuesday,” the kindly old doctor corrected, trying to look severe and
making a complete failure of it. “If you get out of bed to-morrow I’ll
chloroform you and amputate both legs. Don’t worry about him, Mr.
Holden. He’ll be all right. Healthy flesh like his soon heals, but I
want to give it a fair start. Good morning, Jack. Tuesday, mind! Good
morning, Mr. Holden.”
Mr. Holden looked white as he sat on the edge of his son’s bed, for he
was not yet over the shock of the news.
“Tell me about it, Jack,” he said.
Jack smiled.
“I will in a minute, Dad,” he replied. “But I have a little surprise
for you first. You remember the night when you were robbed of that
money?” Jack thrust his hand beneath his pillow, and felt a canvas bag
that lay concealed there.
“Certainly, Jack,” Mr. Holden answered.
“Have you ever had any hope of getting it back?”
Mr. Holden shook his head slowly. “Not after the first few days,” he
replied gloomily.
“You’d be tickled to death, then, if it turned up now?”
“Don’t talk foolishly, lad. Such things don’t happen.”
“But if it did, Dad? What would you do?”
Mr. Holden would have preferred not to discuss the painful matter, but
to humor his son, he rested his chin on his hands and thought for a
while.
“Well,” he said at length, a twinkle coming into his eyes. “I’d ask you
to let me put your salvage money with it, and――”
“Salvage money? I’m afraid Mr. Barker doesn’t mean to pay a cent of
that,” the boy declared. “He ought to, according to the law, but the
law doesn’t seem to be everything.”
The twinkle was still in Mr. Holden’s eyes.
“That’s where you’re wrong, boy,” he said. “The law does amount to a
great deal. I met Mr. Merrill while I was out walking this morning, and
he’s just told me something you’ll be glad to hear.”
“About the――the salvage?”
Mr. Holden nodded.
“What did he say?” Jack asked eagerly.
“That Mr. Barker has decided to pay the whole amount rather than go to
court,” announced the boy’s father, triumphantly.
Jack stared, for that was the last thing he had expected. Then he began
to laugh, for he still had his own good news to tell.
“Yes,” Mr. Holden went on, “he’s going to hand the check over next
week. Yesterday was the last day Mr. Merrill gave him before taking the
matter to court, and as Mr. Barker knew he would have to pay in the
long run, he went round to the lawyer’s house last night and tried to
make a dicker. But Mr. Merrill held out until he got a promise that the
whole amount would be paid.”
“Really?” exclaimed Jack. “That’s fine! We’ll be as rich as――as
anything, sha’n’t we?”
“Well, you will, son.”
“And so will you! I mean――” Jack pulled himself up and made a new
start: “You were saying that if you got back the money that was stolen
you’d put the salvage money with it, weren’t you? And then what?”
“Why, in that case―― But why talk about it, Jack? That sort of miracle
isn’t likely to happen.”
“But――but suppose it did,” Jack insisted. “Suppose it had!”
Mr. Holden shook his head, smiling sadly. “Then I think I’d go back
into business again, son,” he answered.
“How?” the boy asked eagerly, rising on his elbow.
“I’d go into partnership with Garnett and Sayer. Mr. Garnett told me
only a couple of weeks ago that he’d be willing to let me buy a small
interest for fifteen hundred dollars. But he might as well have said
fifteen thousand.”
Jack’s fingers tightened on the canvas bag underneath the pillow, and
he drew it slowly forth.
“Have you ever seen this before?” he asked, holding out the long
missing article in question.
“Why, _Jack_!” Mr. Holden looked from the bag to his son’s merry face.
“Where did that come from?”
“Open it, Dad!”
With trembling fingers Mr. Holden obeyed, and his gaze fell on the
contents.
“There’s none missing,” said the boy, unable to keep up the game any
longer. “And it was on my sloop all the time!”
“I――I don’t understand!” said Mr. Holden.
“Of course you don’t!” laughed Jack. “It kept us all guessing for a
long while.” And then he explained everything, while his father, the
precious bag of money on his knees, listened.
“When those two men go to prison for the theft――and they are going――”
he concluded, “your name will be cleared completely, Dad, won’t it?”
“Aye,” replied Mr. Holden. “Even Barker won’t be able to insinuate
things then.”
There came a rap at the street door, and George and Rodney came
hurrying up the stairs. “Well, they haven’t spoilt your beauty,
anyway,” exclaimed George. “I was afraid you’d got your nose shot off
or something. How’s your leg?”
“Nothing much wrong,” replied Jack. “I’ll be on board again by Tuesday,
but I’ve got to stop in bed till then.”
“You’d better let George and me run the ferry for a day or two,” said
Rodney. “You see if we don’t do a roaring business. The story’s got all
over the place by now, and half the town has been down to look at the
bullet holes on the sloop. Everybody will want to run across in the
_Sea-Lark_ to-morrow.”
“Go to it,” replied Jack. “That’s fine!”
Mr. Holden, bearing his miraculously restored money, slipped from the
room and the visitors perched themselves on Jack’s bed, and George,
frankly disgusted at having missed the adventure, insisted on hearing
a full and detailed account of it. Jack acted as chief historian and
Rodney saw to it that he left nothing out, and when they had ended
George shook his head regretfully.
“Just my luck to get left out of it,” he said. “But I suppose that if
I’d been along those thugs wouldn’t have tried anything.”
“You hate yourself, don’t you?” laughed Rodney.
“Well, with three of us instead of two――”
“George is right,” said Jack. “They wouldn’t have faced such odds, I
guess.”
“Wouldn’t they?” demanded Rodney. “They went out to get that money
back, and they’d have managed it somehow. Maybe they’d have acted
nastier than they did. By the way, Dad and the rest of them said I was
to tell you how sorry they are, you know, and――and all that. And Dad
told me this morning that if you want a place in his office when you
get through school you can have it. Wish you’d take it, because I’ll
have a chance of seeing you now and then.”
“That’s mighty kind of him,” answered Jack, gratefully, “and I guess
I’d love to try it. I wish you’d thank him for me, Rod. I’ll see him
myself as soon as the doctor lets me out, but I’d like him to know that
I appreciate his――his offer.”
“All right, Captain. I’ve got to beat it now. I’ll be in again
to-morrow to see how you’re getting along. Don’t worry about the ferry.
George and I will keep it moving, all right!”
When the boys had gone Mr. Holden came back, and Jack, who had been
doing some thinking in the meanwhile, greeted him with a question.
“Dad,” he asked, “how much is twelve and five?”
“Why, seventeen! Or it was when I went to school.” Mr. Holden was in
high spirits and laughed gayly at his little joke. “Why, son?”
“Well, I was thinking, Dad. If you take that five hundred and put it
with the twelve――”
“I don’t know that I ought to, Jack. Maybe it would be safer for you to
put your money in the bank――”
“Nonsense! Of course you’re going to take it! Gee! look at all the
money you’ve spent on me!”
“Well, I’d pay it back gradually, son, and――”
“Don’t want it! Besides, as I figure it, you won’t need all of it,
anyway, will you?”
“Why, no, only three hundred, or maybe three-fifty.”
“Great! That’ll leave a hundred and fifty, then. And I know a bully way
to spend that!”
“To spend it?” asked his father, dubiously. “Don’t you think that maybe
you’d better――er,――save it, son?”
“I didn’t mean spend exactly: I meant invest. You see, Dad, the ferry
has done pretty well this summer and I guess it’ll do even better next
year, because there are more folks coming here every season. Rod’s
father has offered me a job when I’m through school and I think I’d
like to accept it, but he probably won’t want me until fall, and so I
might as well keep on with the ferry. Don’t you think so?”
“Why――why, yes. You’ve made a good deal of money with it.”
“Yes. And even if I wasn’t here all summer George could run it for me
and I’d still make on it. But what the _Sea-Lark_ needs, Dad, is an
engine――just a two-cylinder motor that’ll kick her back and forth, wind
or no wind. And I know where I can get a perfectly good second-hand one
for a hundred and twenty-five, maybe less. So that’s where the rest of
that salvage money is going, Dad. I’m going to invest it in Holden’s
Ferry.”
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to
follow the text that they illustrate.
――Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.