He stooped and picked up the wallet, and opened it to feast his eyes on the thick roll of bank bills, but was overcome with rage, fury and disappointment when he found that the supposed treasure consisted only of rolls of brown paper, so folded as to swell out the wallet and give the impression of value.
“The artful young scoundrel!” he exclaimed, between his closed teeth. “He has made a fool of me, and I all the time looked upon him as a simpleton. What shall I say to Hogan, who put me up to this job?”
He had a momentary idea of pursuing Andy, but by this time the buggy was a long distance ahead, and every minute was increasing the distance.
To pursue it with any expectation of overtaking it would have been the merest folly. It was hard to give up so rich a prize, but there seemed no help for it.
“I wish I could wring the young rascal’s neck,” thought the baffled highwayman. “He was fooling me all the time, and now he is chuckling over the trick he has played upon me. How shall I meet Hogan?”
The young man hesitated a moment, and then plunged into the woods that skirted the road.
Continuing his walk for five minutes, he came to a secluded spot, where, under a tree, reclined an old acquaintance of ours—in brief, Mr. Michael Hogan.
Hogan’s face was red and inflamed, and his eyes were sore. He was suffering from the severe scalding which had rewarded his attempt to enter the house of the Misses Peabody.
He looked up quickly as he heard the approach of his confederate, and demanded, eagerly:
“Well, Bill, did you see the boy?”