“Bah! Idiot! Can’t you see it’s some of those scoundrelly French prisoners who escaped yesterday? That vagabond of a boy perhaps that you pampered off and were feeding with our good English provisions. Now you see the consequences. The ungrateful rapparee— Oh no, but that’s Irish, and he’d be French.”
“Yes, uncle,” said the boy thoughtfully, for his uncle’s fulminations fell blankly upon his ears as he stood trying to puzzle out some of the pencilled words upon the fly-leaf of the book.
“Here’s pardon, uncle, and something else I can’t make out, and changer. Why, that means exchange! Yes, and lower down here’s sous something, only it’s written over ‘John Champernowne’ and ‘his book’; but that’s in ink. What does oreiller mean, uncle?”
“Bolster,” said Uncle Paul. “No: pillow,” and he turned involuntarily towards the bed, where, unperceived before, a scrap of something red peered from beneath the clean white pillow-case. “Under the pillow,” said Uncle Paul, and stepping to the side of the bed he snatched up the soft down cushion deeply marked by the pressure of his head.
Catching up what lay beneath, he uttered a loud ejaculation and tapped it sharply against the bed-post.
“What have you got there, uncle?”
“Pickle, my boy, it’s my twenty guineas that we thought they’d stolen. What in the name of forceps and lancets did they tie them up in this old silk rag for? It’s a bit of a pocket-handkerchief.”
“Why, uncle,” cried Rodd, laughing, “it isn’t going to be so bad, after all. Somebody’s been having a game with us.”
“Game, eh? Queer sort of a game, Pickle,” cried Uncle Paul; and with very little effort he tore open the silk envelope and poured out a little heap of bright gold coins upon the bed. “Napoleons, by all that’s wonderful!” he cried. “Exchange! I begin to see now, boy. He’s taken my good gold money, whoever he is, and left this French trash. Here, give me that book. Mind—don’t drop my watch.”
“I have got it safe, uncle,” replied the boy, handing the big book to his uncle.