George had the boat under his charge almost all that afternoon. About four o'clock Mr. Black suddenly mounted the steps. His face was very pale and he looked as though he had lost everything on earth that was worth living for.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed his partner, as the owner of the lost pocket-book threw himself wearily down upon the bench. "Are you sick?"
"Yes, sick at heart. I am a used-up man, Sam," replied Mr. Black. "My wife and children will lose the roof that shelters them, and I shall be turned out to begin the world again, as I began it thirty years ago, with empty hands."
"You don't mean to tell me that you have lost it?" exclaimed Sam.
"Then what in the name of sense are you staying in here for? Stir around and make a fuss about it. If you dropped it on the boat, it may have fallen into the hands of some honest person."
"And so it has," cried George, from his place at the wheel. "The old man's got it."
George thought that since he was acting as a pilot, he ought to use a pilot's language, and that was the reason he called the captain the "old man."
"How do you know that?" demanded Mr. Black and Sam, in one breath.
"I saw him have it—it was a black pocket-book with a silver clasp—and I heard him read the name of Jerry Black from a card he took out of it."