He stopped in the middle of the sentence—the pocket was empty! He ran his hand way down in—empty. He turned the pocket inside out—not a thing in it. Then he felt each pocket in turn rapidly, then carefully—no money. The grocery man began putting away the things which Kenneth had bought. Ransom did not notice him, but kept up his frantic search—no result. He stopped to think. The perspiration stood in drops on his brow, and a leaden weight had settled down on his heart as he realized that he had been robbed of over a hundred dollars of his earnings; every cent of which was needed to carry him through. He felt sure that his pocket had been picked at the Post Office. Then the thought came to him with crushing force that he had lost the money of the other boys, and that he would have to make it up out of what was left of his small hoard at home.
“Perhaps I dropped it,” he thought to himself, and he rushed back to the Post Office to see.
He searched the big room desperately, and was so evidently troubled that the watchman asked him what he was looking for.
“I lost some money here; have you seen anything of it? I will pay a reward.”
The man looked at him incredulously, and then laughed in his face.
“Found any money? I guess not! Why, there’s been a thousand people in this room to-day. Found any money? Just listen to that!” He broke into a laugh again, and turned his back on the distracted boy.
Kenneth wandered aimlessly out into the corridor, every nerve racking with agony. As he walked along, he saw among a lot of names, titles of departments and court rooms, “U.S. Marshal.”
“I guess I’ll ask him; he ought to know if there are pickpockets around here, and he may help me,” and suiting the action to the word, Ransom made for the room.
The assistant marshal, a small, keen-eyed, albeit kindly man, was just closing the office when the boy burst in.
“I have lost some money,” Ransom began right away. “Stolen out of my pocket, I think.”