“Nothing much,” replied Jonas. “I was just a-thinking; that’s all. If Nat was only three years old when he came here to live with me,” he added to himself, “he couldn’t have had that money. Somebody has given it to him since, and it was not so very long ago, either. Whoop!” and it was all he could do to keep from uttering the words out loud. “He has got it from the old man; there’s where he got it from. And didn’t I say that the old man had something hidden out all these years? He didn’t give me a quarter of what he saved from the rebels. Now he has got to give me that money or there’s going to be a fracas in this house. I won’t keep him no longer. You can bet on that.”
At this point in his meditations Jonas was interrupted by the return of his son who was coming along as though he had nothing to live for, swinging his hand with the bag in it to let his father believe that there was nothing in it that he cared to save.
“What’s the matter?” inquired Jonas.
“I have found the bag but there is nothing in it, dog-gone the luck,” sputtered Caleb. “There is just a ‘shinplaster’ in it and it calls for two bits. Where is the rest of your money?” he added, turning fiercely upon Nat.
“That is all I have,” replied Nat. “It was in that bag, wasn’t it? Then I have no more to give you.”
Jonas took the bag, glanced at the shinplaster and put it into his pocket. The smile had now given away to the frown.
“Say, pap, ain’t you going to give that to me!” asked Caleb, who began to see that the interest he had taken in unearthing Nat’s money was not going to help very much.
“No; you can’t get no shoes with that money. I will take it and get some coffee with it the next time I go to town. Is this all the money you have left, Nat?”
“Every cent; and now you are going to take that away from me, too?”
“Of course; for I think it is the properest thing to do. You don’t ever go to church—”