“You must have dropped it out on your way down from the bank,” said the engineer.
“How could I drop it out?” groaned my father, as he pointed to the deep pocket in which he always kept it.
I searched again in every part of my father’s clothing, but in vain. He was perfectly sober now, so far as I could judge, the grief and mortification attending his heavy loss having neutralized the effects of the liquor. On the seat stood the queer-shaped bottle from which my father had imbibed confusion. By its side was the tumbler, half filled with the whiskey. I concluded that it had been poured out for my father, and that the discovery of his loss had prevented him from drinking it. I put them on the floor and looked into the box; I examined every part of the engine-room again, but without success. The missing treasure could not be found.
My father sat down upon the box again, and actually wept for grief and shame. I heard the whistle of the approaching train. It seemed to startle the victim of the whiskey bottle from his sad revery. He removed his hands from his face, and glanced at Christy, with a look which was full of meaning to me, and seemed to be quite intelligible to the engineer.
“I guess I’ll take a look on the wharf,” said Christy, beginning to edge slowly out of the engine-room.
“Christy Holgate,” cried my father, springing at the throat of the engineer, and clutching him like a madman, “you have got my money!”
“Why, Ralph, what ails you? Do you think I’d take your money?” replied Christy; but his face was as pale as my father’s and his lip quivered.
“I know you have! That’s what you made me drunk for,” continued my father savagely, as he began to claw into the garments of the engineer, in search of his treasure.
Christy started as though he had been stung by a serpent when my father placed his hand upon his breast pocket, and a violent struggle ensued. As my maddened parent tore open his coat, I distinctly saw enough of the well-known pocket-book to enable me to identify it. He had taken it from my father’s pocket and transferred it to his own while handing him the glass of whiskey.
“He has it, father!” I shouted. “I see it in his pocket.”