The pile of fruit had disappeared with incredible swiftness, but the boys themselves departed slowly, as though reluctant to leave a region of such extraordinary windfalls. One little chap had fared particularly well, for both his coat-pockets were stuffed and each fist grabbed a big specimen of the beautiful fruit. A young fellow, fresh-faced and country-looking, had been looking at the scene from a little distance down the street. Now he walked up and spoke to the small boy.
"Give you a nickel, bub, for one of the red ones. They look just like the apples up in Saco, Maine. Lord's sakes, how I wish I was there!"
The boy signified his willingness to make the bargain, but he wanted to give a sporting color to the transaction. "Right or left?" he asked, his hands held behind his back.
"Left, of course," answered the yokel.
"'Ain't I always been that?"
The boy handed over the apple, received the promised nickel in return, and departed with a joyous whoop. The young countryman held up the apple and looked at it sentimentally.
"Now, what under the canopy's that!" he exclaimed. There was a piece of paper tightly twisted about the stem of the fruit. He unfolded it carefully, for it could be seen that it bore a written message.
When a man with a complexion like a new red wagon turns pale it means something. Indiman and I stepped up, for we really thought that he was going to faint.
"Much obliged, gentlemen. I'm all right now," said the young chap. "But for the minute I was that struck. Say, gentlemen, you'll think I'm a liar, but it was my own girl, Miss Mattie Townley, who wrote that there letter and twisted it around an apple-stem. And she wrote it to me—me, Ben Day. What do you think of that?"
"This is a world of infinite chance," said Indiman, politely.