At different times this dream took different shapes.
Sometimes it was a pocket-book, oh! so fat with greenbacks, sometimes a purse of gold, sometimes “a diamint ring:” but, whatever it should prove to be, Carl was convinced, “felt it in his bones,” he said, it would be found, and found hidden among the cinders.
Once he had brought home a silver fork, “scooped,” as he called it in newsboy’s slang, from an ash-heap in an open lot.
On this fork the family had lived for three days.
Once he rescued a doll, which would have been lovely if it had had a head; and at various times there were scraps of ribbon, lace and silk, all of which served to strengthen the belief that something wonderful must “turn up” at last.
“Cricky! how that old wind does holler,” said Carl to himself, as he toiled along, “an’ it cuts right through me, my jacket’s so thin an’ torn—I’d mend it myself if I only knew how, and somebody’d lend me a needle and thread.
“Don’t I wish I’d find the fortune this morning!
“I dreamt of it last night—dreamt it was a bar of gold, long as my arm, and precious thick, too.
“Guess I’ll go to that big bar’l afore them orful high flat houses—that’s allus full of cinders.
“It’s lucky for us them big bugs don’t sift their ashes! We wouldn’t have no fire if they did,—that’s what’s the matter.”