“What money?” inquired Nat, slowly rising to his feet.
“Aw! What money?” shouted Jonas, going under the lean-to, catching up Peleg’s valise and shaking it to be sure that there was no money in it. “I mean that money you have come here to dig up—the money that old man Nickerson hid here during the war; the money that you have been drawing on to buy him tobacco? Where is it?”
“You have the camp and you see everything that is to be seen,” said Nat. “Where the money is I don’t know. Yes, I do know,” he added to himself. “But I am going to keep it to myself.”
“Whoo-pee!” said Jonas again. “Did you come down here for nothing? I know you didn’t; and I must know where that money is and all about it, or there will be the worst whipped boy here in these woods that you ever heard tell of. Once more and for the last time, I ask you where it is.”
“You can just look around and find it for yourself,” replied Nat, who, by gradually working his way around, had succeeded in getting between Jonas and the bushes. “If Mr. Nickerson left any money I don’t know where it is. He would not leave it up here in the woods for it to rot all away and do nobody any good.”
“No, I don’t think he would do that. He thought too much of a dollar to waste it in that way; but he could leave it up here in the woods and tell you where to find it when he was through with it. Now, Nat, where is it? Tell me, honor bright, and I will give you half of it; I will, so sure as I stand here.”
“You must look around and find it, for I don’t know where it is,” replied Nat; and the expression on his face showed that he was in earnest in his decision to keep the hiding place of the money all to himself. “If you find it you can have it all.”
“I’ll bet you I do, and you will go without shoes and clothes this winter,” said Jonas, slipping his hand into his pocket and looking around at the trees as if he were searching for a switch. “I made you an offer and you won’t take it, and now I will look for myself; but first you are going to have something to remember that offer by. What do you find there, Caleb?”
“There ain’t nothing in Peleg’s valise because I have looked all through it,” replied Caleb. “But here is something I can’t see into.”
As he spoke he passed the spade over to his father, running his fingers through some dirt that still adhered to it.