"Pocket-book, eh?" cried Polly, seizing it in her hands, despite of the comic apprehension of Bryan, who insisted that it would burn her fingers. The whole truth flashed across her mind at once. Tom's dream was no dream, but a reality, and the struggle in his mind whether to keep or return it, had caused that sleepless and uncomfortable night. "Bryan," said she, quickly, "did you hear any one say that they had lost any money yesterday?"
"Let me see," replied the other. "Yes, to be sure, 44 came out of the hall-door, and axed me if I saw a pocket-book."
"It must be his. Thank God for this merciful dispensation," cried the agitated wife. "Quick, quick, my bonnet and shawl, and come you, Bryan, you know the place; this money must be that which was lost."
"I'm wid you, ma'am," answered Bryan. "Who knows but that may be the identical pocket-book; at any rate it'll do as well if there's as much money in it, and if there isn't, there'll be another crop before we come back."
CHAPTER VIII.
RETRIBUTION.
Snugly ensconced in his own particular apartment, Mr. Granite had flung himself in post-prandial abandon into his easiest of easy-chairs. Leisurely, and with the smack of a true connoisseur, he dallied with a glass of exquisite Madeira. The consciousness of the enviable nature of his worldly position never imbued him so thoroughly as at such a moment. Business was flourishing, his health was excellent, and his son, on whom he concentrated all the affection of which his heart was capable, had recently distinguished himself at a college examination. Everything, in fact, seemed to him couleur de rose.
It can readily be imagined that to be disturbed at such a period of enjoyment was positive high treason against the home majesty of the mercantile monarch.
Fancy, therefore, what a rude shock it was to his quiet, when he was informed that Mr. Sterling wished to see him on a matter of the greatest importance. "I cannot, I will not see him, or anybody," said the enraged potentate; "you know, he knows, my invariable rule. It must not be infringed, for any one whatever, much less for such a person," and, closing his eyes in a spasm of self-sufficiency, he again subsided into calmness, slightly ruffled, however, by the outrageous attack upon his privacy.
He had just succeeded in restoring his disturbed equanimity, when he was once more startled into ill-humor by the sound of voices as if in altercation, and a sharp knock at the chamber-door.