Standing on the floor beneath, Ephraim watched her face growing sober and disappointed, as she exclaimed:
“It’s gone! It’s completely gone!”
“It has, dearie? Well, maybe your mother forgot and put it somewhere else. The likeliest thing in the world to happen, with her mind so upset as it has been. We’ll go back and ask her. Don’t fret. Probably it wasn’t of much account, anyway.”
“Oh! but, dear Ephraim, it was! It could point the way to our big fortune that’s to be dug out of the ground!”
“What? What is that you say, child? Nonsense. We don’t live in the days of witchcraft, and that’s what such a performance would mean.”
Yet when they had returned to Mrs. Trent and related their misadventure he was startled by hearing that sensible woman tragically exclaim, in contradiction to his own assertion:
“Lost! Then Sobrante is certainly bewitched!”