Just then, Mouser, who was looking out of the station window, gave a sudden exclamation.
“Look here, fellows,” he cried. “See who’s coming!”
They crowded together, looking over his shoulder.
“Why, it’s Tommy Stone!” ejaculated Bobby.
“He must be going back to Belden School,” added Fred.
“And that’s his father with him, I guess,” put in Pee Wee.
Tommy Stone was a boy who had played quite a part in the lives of Bobby and Fred a few months before. He had run away from home to go out West to “fight Indians.” He had taken his father’s pocketbook with him, intending to use only enough to pay his fare and send the rest back.
Unluckily for the young Indian fighter—or rather luckily, as it turned out—he lost the pocketbook out of the car window. Bobby and Fred were standing by the side of the track as the train went thundering past, and the wallet fell almost at their feet. They picked it up and were wildly excited when they found that it contained no less than four hundred dollars.
The boys had dreams of unlimited ice-cream and soda water as the result of their find. Still they and their parents made earnest effort to find the owner, but as the days passed by and no claimant appeared it looked as though the money would become the boys’ property.
Late in the fall, Bobby and Fred rescued a small boy from the clutches of some larger boys who were amusing themselves by tormenting him. The boy turned out to be Tommy Stone. He had been brought back after his runaway and sent to Belden School, which was not far from Rockledge. Tommy had heard that the boys had found a pocketbook and suspected that it was the one that he had lost. He made a clean breast of it, and the money was restored to its rightful owner. Mr. Stone wanted to reward the boys handsomely, but their parents would not permit them to accept a money reward, and Mr. Stone compromised by sending them the material for a royal feast at Rockledge.