“I’ll take this loose money out of the way first,” thought he; “then maybe I can move the trunk.”
He had nothing but his pockets to put the coin into, and those his frock covered. “I’ll find something better,” thought he. Backing out of the log, he pulled off his shoes, and re-entered with one of them in his hand. This he filled with all the half-dollars he could find about the end of the trunk, which he then tried to move.
“It’s stuck in a heap of rotten stuff here,” he muttered, “and I shall break it more if I pull hard on it.” So he resolved to empty it where it was.
He was half-way out of the log, bringing after him his shoe freighted with coin, when he was startled by a sudden bark from Lion. Leaving his shoe, he tumbled himself out upon the ground in fearful haste, to find a stray calf in the bushes the innocent cause of alarm. For keeping guard too faithfully poor Lion got a box on the ear.
After waiting awhile, to see if anything more dangerous than the calf was nigh, Jack brought out his shoe, poured its rattling contents into the basket, which he covered with his coat, and then went back into the log. This time he took both shoes in with him, which he filled, and emptied one after the other into the basket. Another journey, another, and still another, and he began to think there was more coin than he could carry home.
“I can get it away from here, though, so nobody can tell on whose land I found it,”—which he seemed to think a very important point to gain. “I’ll leave the little trunk where it is,—only take out the money.”
He had gone into the log for the last time, and got the last of the money, filling both shoes quite full, and was bringing them out with him,—he had actually got them out, leaving one at the entrance to the opening, and holding the other in his hands,—when Lion, notwithstanding his previous punishment, uttered a very low, suppressed growl.
Jack looked up from under his tumbled hair, and there, not three yards distant, with his horn-headed cane, regarding with grim amazement the boy and his shoes full of coin, stood Squire Peternot!