“There isn’t now,” replied Henry Burns, calmly, but with a shade of disappointment in his voice. “There isn’t now, but there was. The mice have got here before us, that’s all.”
He held up to the light a scrap of the torn paper. It was no ordinary paper that the lantern-light revealed to the eyes of the astonished Harvey—far from it. It was the paper that no man may make for himself—the paper of a national bank-note—and there were, on this particular fragment, yet to be seen, a full cipher and the half of another. Harvey fairly gasped.
“That was a hundred-dollar bill!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, or a thousand,” said Henry Burns.
Harvey groaned.
“Better drop those mice overboard, hadn’t we?” said he.
Henry Burns scooped the family up in his hand and passed them over.
“I believe you said if you saw a witch you’d eat her,” he remarked, slyly.
“Ugh!” ejaculated Harvey, as he dropped the mice alongside. “Say, you take it coolly enough, don’t you?”
“Well, why not?” replied Henry Burns. “It isn’t our money that’s gone.”