The girl hastily counted the bills. "Goodness!" she exclaimed. It was ninety-five dollars in all—a small fortune indeed for a person in Judson's situation. How came he with such booty, for booty it must be, since he had never been known to save a dollar in his life, yet here was quite a snug little fortune that had been acquired by some unknown means.
Sophronia soon had the lid off, and the contents of the jar in her lap.
As Sophronia puzzled over the matter, her eyes chanced to fall on the scrap of paper in which the money had been wrapped, and smoothing out the paper, she slowly read the reward offered by the President of the Turnpike Corporation, for any information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the raiders, whose recent deeds of violence were a menace to the community.
So this, then, was a solution to the problem vexing her brain! Steve Judson must have betrayed the raiders, and this money was the larger part of the spoils he had received. He certainly could not have accumulated such an amount otherwise, for his ill-kept, sterile patch of ground scarcely yielded a poor living.
As Sophronia sat looking first at the money then at the printed reward, the fear of detection suddenly came over her. Whether it was ill-gotten gain, or not, the money certainly was not hers, and she had no right to thus unearth it from its secret hiding place. Suppose some one should discover her in the act!
Alarmed at the mere thought, she hastily wrapped the scrap of paper around the money, and dropping the roll in the jar, screwed on the lid and reburied the treasure, taking care to leave the place looking quite as she had found it. Then she hastily quitted the spot.