Weak and faint he sat down on the edge of his trundle bed.
“What made that blamed hole? It wasn’t there a little while ago. It must have wored the hole while I was walking. I wouldn’t lose that knife for ten million dollars. It can’t be lost!”
And then he repeated the search, as almost anyone will do in similar circumstances. He even looked under the jewsharp and among the marbles on the stand, where a mosquito could not have hidden itself.
“Oh, what’s the use!” he exclaimed, dropping down again despairingly on the bed. “It’s lost! Where did I lose it?”
Pulling himself together, he recalled the experiences of the day, from the time he received the present directly after breakfast. He had tested the implement many times in the course of the forenoon and afternoon, and by and by remembered snapping the big blade shut and slipping it into his pocket as he was going out of the house to the post office to perform his daily task. He reasoned well.
“I lost it somewhere atween here and the store. I can’t see how it slipped down my trousers leg without me feeling it, but that’s what it done. It’s a-laying on the ground atween here and there, onless,” he added, with a catch of his breath, “that ugly looking willain seen me drop it inside the store. I wonder if he give me that quarter so as to hurry me out that he might git my knife!”
He shivered at the probability, but rather singularly the dread was dissipated by a few minutes more of thought.
“If he’d seen it, so would Nora and she’d told me. It’s somewhere along the street.”
Such being his conclusion, the all-important question was what should he do to retrieve his crushing loss. His first inclination was to tell his parents and then hurry back over the route to look for the treasure. But it was night. There was no such thing as a lantern in the house, he could not carry an ordinary light in the breeze, and the search would be hopeless.
“I’ll get up as soon as it is light,” he said, “and hunt till I find it.”