"I don't keer," said the woman, grabbing the coins when Sophie had collected them. "He come out o' the woods last night and he had some money an' I hadn't a cent. I sent him to git things from the store and all he brought back—and that was at midnight when they turned him out o' the hotel—was a bag of crackers and a pound of oatmeal. And he's got money! He kin kill me if he wants. I'm goin' ter have some of it—Oh, look! what's this?"
Janice had almost cried out in amazement, too. One of the coins in the woman's toil-creased palm was a gold piece.
"Five dollars! Mebbe he had more," Mrs. Narnay said anxiously. "Mebbe Concannon's paid 'em all some more money, and Jim's startin' in to drink it up."
"Better put that money back, Mom, he'll be mad," said Sophie, evidently much alarmed.
"He won't be ugly when the drink wears off and he ain't got no money to git no more," her mother said. "Jim never is."
"But he'll find out youse got that gold coin. He's foxy," said the shrewd child.
Janice drew forth her purse. "Let me have that five dollar gold piece," she said to Mrs. Narnay. "I'll give you five one dollar bills for it. You won't have to show but one of the bills at a time, that is sure."
"That's a good idea, Miss," said the woman hopefully. "And mebbe I can make him start back for the woods again to-night. Oh, dear me! 'Tis an awful thing! I don't want him 'round—an' yet when he's sober he's the nicest man 'ith young'uns ye ever see. He jest dotes on this poor little thing," and she looked down again into the weazened face of the baby.
"It is too bad," murmured Janice; but she scarcely gave her entire mind to what the woman was saying.
Here was a second gold piece turned up in Polktown. And, as Uncle Jason had said, such coins were not often seen in the hamlet. Janice had more than one reason for securing the gold piece, and she determined to learn, if she could, if this one was from the collection that had been stolen from the school-house weeks before.