"See! see! O Morton! Morton!" and reached out her arms in a desperate way, too paralyzed for the instant to rise.
Morton, following her wild glance, echoed the cry, for the supposed wad of tobacco, uncurling in the heat, was now plainly seen to be—a roll of greenbacks!
Morton sprang forward and made a lunge for them; Sara, regaining her wits, did the same, while Molly shrieked and whirled like a dervish, but alas! it was too late! Their scorched fingers clutched only a crumbling blackened roll, which fell to pieces in their grasp, and the day's search for that money, which meant all the difference between comfort and privation, had ended in a tiny heap of ashes, which a breath would blow away.
For one long, dazed, dreadful minute Sara and Morton stood gazing at each other, the boy's blue eyes large as saucers, and Sara's brown ones turned to black by desperation; then the baby, frightened at the silence and their strange expressions, began to cry and tug at Sara's dress, demanding to be taken up.
This broke the spell. Molly gave way to an agony of crying; Morton said brokenly, "Oh, what will we do?" and Sara, stooping mechanically to lift the unconscious little cause of all this trouble, gave a long, quivering sigh, and murmured helplessly, "God only knows!"
And, indeed, the prospect was dark enough. Those greenbacks meant the savings of months, doubtless, put by bit by bit, for just this occasion, and to have them thus destroyed in one careless instant seemed too cruel!
After a little they could talk about it.
"Where could it have been?" sobbed Molly, making a dab at her eyes with the potato, but remembering in time to substitute the corner of her apron.
"I don't know," said Sara; "it was wrapped in brown paper, I think. Even if we had seen it, we would have thought it but a twisted scrap. Did either of you see Neddie when he picked it up?"
No one had, until Morton spied it on the way to his mouth, and all conjectures were useless so long as the little fellow could not explain.