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I came over here this mornin' to visit Julia's grave. There was a scoffer in our pulpit, that young whippersnapper from Wapatomac had exchanged with our minister and I didn't care to hear him." "Oh, I see. So you come over to your wife's grave, eh?" "Yes. What are you lookin' like that for?" "Oh, nothin'. I thought maybe you was chasin' after Lulie.
"A fortni't later I took a couple of days off and went up to Wapatomac to visit the Van Wedderburns, same as I'd promised. Their 'cottage' was pretty nigh big enough for a hotel, and was so grand that I, even if I did have on my Sunday frills, was 'most ashamed to ring the doorbell. "But I did ring it, and the feller that opened the door was big and solemn and fine lookin' and had side whiskers.
"Hush, Jed! He knows you didn't take it. He knew it all the time you were telling him you did. In fact he came into your shop this afternoon to tell you that the Sage man over at Wapatomac had found the four hundred dollars on the table in his sitting-room just where the captain left it. Sage had just 'phoned him that very thing. He would have told you that, but you didn't give him the chance.
Other summer hotels do it, the Wapatomac House and the rest, so why not us? It hurts my conscience to see good money gettin' past the door 'count of the "Not at Home" sign hung on the knob. What d'you say, partners? says he. "Well, we had consider'ble to say, partic'lar Cap'n Jonadab. 'Twas too risky and too expensive.
And our own man Snow said he'd go bail it hadn't been smuggled off the premises sense HE struck port. So 'twas safe so far; but where was it, and who had it? "The final football game, the one with Wapatomac, was to be played over on their grounds on the afternoon of the fifth day. Parker, cap'n of the eleven, give out that, considerin' everything, he didn't know but we'd better call it off.
The captain was the first to give up. "'Tain't here," he snapped. "I didn't think 'twas. Where in time is it? That's what I want to know." Jed rubbed his chin. "Are you sure you had it when you left Wapatomac?" he asked. "Sure? No, I ain't sure of anything. But I'd have sworn I did. The money was on the table along with my hat and gloves. I picked it up and shoved it in my overcoat pocket.
"I got one letter from Effie pretty soon after she left, sayin' she liked her new job and that the Van Wedderburns liked her. And that's all I did hear, though Bob himself wrote me in May, sayin' him and Mabel, his wife, had bought a summer cottage in Wapatomac, and me and Jonadab especially me must be sure and come to see it and them.
Madeline did not put in an appearance, and by and by it began to rain, and Albert walked home, damp, dejected, and disgusted. When, a day or two later, he met Miss Fosdick at the post office and asked why she had not come he learned that her mother had insisted upon a motor trip to Wapatomac that afternoon. "Besides," she said, "you surely mustn't expect me EVERY Saturday."
"He could, I cal'late, but he wouldn't," he observed. "'Twas old Sylvester Sage, up to South Wapatomac, the 'cranberry king' they call him up there. He owns cranberry bogs from one end of the Cape to the other. You've heard of him, of course." Jed rubbed his chin. "Maybe so," he drawled, "but if I have I've forgot him.
"Jed, if that yarn you're tryin' to spin was wound in a ball and a kitten was playin' with it you couldn't be worse snarled up. What he's tryin' to tell you," he explained, turning to Grover, "is that the other day, when I was over to Wapatomac, old Sylvester Sage over there paid me fourteen hundred dollars in cash and when I got back here all I could find was a thousand.
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