“I know,” he said to himself, “that’s the old University. I wish I knew all the things they teach there. Never was at school in my life, but I’ve picked up a good deal, for all that.”
Bar was only half right.
He had been in a terrible school, indeed, and had grown to be a remarkable sort of fellow, simply by refusing to learn the evil part of the lessons his “professors” had tried to teach him.
Still, he was greatly in need of the other kind of “lessons,” and he felt it bitterly, as he stood and looked up at the gray stone building.
His attention was suddenly diverted by a loud exclamation not many paces from him, and he turned in time to see a shabbily dressed fellow pick up from the sidewalk what seemed to be a very heavy and well-filled pocketbook.
“Some old trick,” Bar was saying to himself, when the stranger turned to him with the pocketbook in his hand, remarking, furtively:
“Big find that, sir. Just see how full it is. No end of bank notes, and all big ones. There’ll be a whopping reward offered for it.”
“You’re in luck, I should say, then,” drawled Bar, in his character of collegian. “Of course you’ll advertise it?”
“Yes, sir, ought to be advertised,” rattled the stranger; “but I can’t stay to do it. I’m off for Boston to-night. Couldn’t stay on any account. Tell you what I’ll do. You look like a gentleman. Feel sure you’ll see that the right man gets it. Square and honest. You take it and divide the reward. Won’t be less’n a hundred, sure’s you live.”
“Not less than that, certainly,” drawled Bar. “Let me look at it?”