“Come with me and I’ll see,” said the man, and without waiting for Matt to offer a reply, he caught the boy by the arm, and forced him through the crowd to an open spot behind a large tree.
“I would like to know who lost this,” went on the man, as he opened the flap of the pocket-book, and gazed inside at the contents. “By Jove! look at that pile of bills!” he went on, as he turned the pocket-book around so that Matt might catch sight of what certainly did look like twenty-five or thirty bank bills tucked away in one of the pockets. “Must be a hundred dollars or more in it.”
“The owner of that pocket-book will miss it,” 117 returned Matt. “You ought to make an effort to find him.”
“Of course! of course!” assented the man heartily. “I don’t want to keep anybody’s money—not if I know it is theirs. Let me see if there is a card in it.”
He turned the pocket-book around and put his fingers first in one pocket and then another.
“Not a blessed thing but that pile of bills,” he went on. “Now, isn’t that strange?”
Then he suddenly drew from his vest pocket a gold watch and looked at it.
“Quarter to three!” he exclaimed in a startled tone. “And I must catch the three o’clock train for Baltimore! I haven’t time to look up the owner of this pocket-book, valuable as it is.”
“You might take a later train,” suggested Matt.
The man shook his head.