"Gee!" exclaimed one burly fellow, rising on his elbow. "How I'd like ter git my paw on that reward—five thousand dollars for any information!"
"I'm in fur money ez sure ez ye air born! All signs favor," exclaimed old Clenk eagerly. "I dream about money mighty nigh every night. Paid in ter me—chink—chink—I allus takes it in gold. Goin' ter bed is the same ter me that goin' ter the bank is ter most folks."
His interpolations into the conversation usually failed to secure even a contemptuous rebuff; they passed as if unheard. But such is the coercive power of gold, albeit in the abstract, that this tenuous vision of wealth had its fascination. The brawny workman held the newspaper aside to look curiously over at the piteous wreck, as the old ragamuffin grinned and giggled in joyous retrospect, then began to read again the advertisement: "Twenty-five thousand dollars in cash if the information leads to the recovery of the child."
"Do they head them advertisements 'Suckers, Attention'?" asked one of the men who labored under the disadvantage of illiteracy. The scraps read aloud from the papers were his only source of information as to their contents. "They oughter say 'Suckers, Attention,' for they don't even tell whut the kid looks like. I wouldn't know him from Adam ef I wuz ter pass him in the road."
"But they do tell what he looks like!" exclaimed the reader. "Here it all is: blue eyes, golden hair, fair skin, rosy cheeks——"
"Cutest leetle trick!" exclaimed old Clenk, with a reminiscent smile at the image thus conjured up.
The words passed unnoticed save by Drann and Holvey. They exchanged one glance of consternation, and the fancied security in which they had dwelt, as fragile as a crystal sphere, was shattered in an instant. The old man was broken by his illness, his recent hardships. He was verging on his dotage. His senile folly might well cost them their lives or liberty.
Indeed, as the description progressed, detailing the child's attire even to his red shoes, the old fellow's fingers were toying fatuously with one of them in his deep coat pocket among the loose tobacco that fed his pipe. "That don't half ekal him," he broke out suddenly. "Never war sech another delightsome leetle creeter."
A moment of stunned amazement supervened among the group.
"Why, say, old Noah, did you ever see that kid?" at length demanded the reader, with a keen look of suspicion.