“It’s hoed through!”
“What’s hoed through?” asked Sally, with quick sympathy, trying to console the urchin for some loss he had sustained.
“De knife!” exclaimed little Dan, with a face of blank woe.
“The knife! what knife? But don’t cry, dear; if you lost it through that hole it must be lying on the track, you know, somewhere between us and the beach.”
This happy thought did not seem to have occurred to Matt, whose cheeks at once resumed their flush and his eyes their blaze.
Taking his hand, Sally led him down the track.
They looked carefully as they went, and had not gone far when Matt sprang forward with a scream of delight and picked up a clasp-knife. It was by no means a valuable one. It had a buckhorn handle, and its solitary blade, besides being broken at the point, was affected with rust and tobacco in about equal proportions.
“Oh, Matt, where did you find it?”
“Come down and you see,” he exclaimed, pointing with greater excitement than ever to the beach below.
They were soon down, and there, on the margin of the woods, they found a heap of cocoa-nut shells scattered about.