Having eaten his supper, Frank went directly to his room, and got out the bundle of books he had procured from Samuel Windham. He piled the volumes on the table and began to look them over. There were four histories, an atlas, and several volumes of poetry.
“The histories won’t bring much—they are too much worn,” thought the young book agent.
“But this book of Longfellow’s poems may——Goodness gracious me!”
Frank fairly gasped the last words, and his eyes bulged out of his head. For from between the leaves of the book had dropped a hundred-dollar bill.
“A hundred dollars!” he cried, and then checked himself. Arising, he locked the door of the room, and pulled down the window shade.
With nervous fingers he thumbed over the volume. Before long he came across another bill, and then another.
“Three hundred dollars—no, four hundred!” he murmured, and then shook out two more. “Why, this is a regular gold mine!”
At last he had gone over the book carefully, and now he had before him ten one-hundred-dollar bills—exactly a thousand dollars! The book contained nothing more. He cast it aside and took up the remaining volumes.
At last the examination was complete, and before him lay a total of fourteen hundred dollars. Each of the bank bills was crisp and new, and as he gazed at them his heart almost stopped beating. Fourteen hundred dollars! It was a little fortune. With so much money he could open a bank account of his own, or go into a store business.
But swiftly on the heels of this thought came another. This money was not his. It was true he had purchased the books, but the original owner had not known that this money lay hidden in the volumes.