“If ever I get any money ahead,” he observed, “I’ll put some of it into education, and I’ll study up aeronautics first thing. It seems as if it’s natural for me to see right through a machine first time I see it, but I don’t understand the real principles, for all that. No, sir, it’s brains like Mr. Morse has got that counts. If sky-sailing is going to last, and I follow it up, I’m going to dig deep right down into it, college fashion, and really understand my business. Hello!”
Andy had laid aside the scientific book and had taken up a newspaper. Glancing over its columns, his eye became fixed upon an advertisement occupying a prominent position just under some local reading matter. This is what it read.
Notice—Important!
Lost—Somewhere on a train between Macon and Greenville, an old leather pocketbook, marked Robert Webb, Springfield, and containing $200. The finder may keep the money, and upon return of the pocketbook will be handsomely rewarded.
West, Thorburn & Castle, Attorneys,
Butler Block, Greenville.
“Well,” aspirated Andy energetically, “here’s something new!”
The incident stirred up his thought so much that he found himself walking the floor restlessly. Andy had a vivid imagination, and he built up all kinds of fancies about the singular advertisement.
“Wonder what lies under all this?” ruminated Andy. “They don’t want the two hundred dollars, and they offer more money to get back that old pocketbook! They will never get the whole of it, though, that’s certain. Gus Talbot tore off the flap of it. The rest of it—lying in my old clothes in that shed on the Collins farm, where I helped drive those geese. There was nothing left in the pocketbook, I am sure of that. What can they want it for, then? Evidently Mr. Webb didn’t get my postal card.”