He raised himself to a sitting position, and with one hand to his poor dazed head, gazed with dim, half-unconscious eyes at the other held before him—wide open and empty!
As he gazed, a bitter cry escaped his lips.
"Then the brute has made off with it, after all!"
This, you see, was the way in which Gull "eased himself," as he expressed it, and satisfied the demands that gratitude made upon his honest heart.
I have very little more to tell you, and that you could almost guess for yourself.
Gull spent a few quiet days on his bed, attended devotedly by his little lads, who were much over-awed at father's "bein' took bad," and filled with wide-eyed wonder when "our gentleman" climbed the old staircase more than once, to see how father was, and to provide for him some new comfort.
Once again, two versions of a true story were told in two separate homes. It was the version that the "twinses" heard which was the shortest in the telling.
"Tell us all about it, father," said Bob, when Gull was "rested" enough to talk to his boys.
"Nay, lad, there ain't much to tell. I just collared the thief as he was making off with Mr. Kingsley's pocket-book, and he didn't like it somehow, and threw me down. But that's all about it."
"Oh! but you got the pocket-book from him first, you know, father."