I count this one of the great events of my youth.  But there was a greater one, although it seemed not so at the time of it.  A traveler on the road to Ballybeen had dropped his pocketbook containing a large amount of money—­two thousand seven hundred dollars was the sum, if I remember rightly.  He was a man who, being justly suspicious of the banks, had withdrawn his money.  Posters announced the loss and the offer of a large reward.  The village was profoundly stirred by them.  Searching parties went up the road stirring its dust and groping in its grass and briers for the great prize which was supposed to be lying there.  It was said, however, that the quest had been unsuccessful.  So the lost pocketbook became a treasured mystery of the village and of all the hills and valleys toward Ballybeen—­a topic of old wives and gabbing husbands at the fireside for unnumbered years.

By and by the fall term of school ended.  Uncle Peabody came down to get me the day before Christmas.  I had enjoyed my work and my life at the Hackets’, on the whole, but I was glad to be going home again.  My uncle was in high spirits and there were many packages in the sleigh.

“A merry Christmas to ye both an’ may the Lord love ye!” said Mr. Hacket as he bade us good-by.  “Every day our thoughts will be going up the hills to your house.”

As he was tucking the blankets around my feet old Nick Tubbs came zigzagging up the road from the tavern.

“What stimulation travels with that man!” said the schoolmaster.  “He might be worse, God knows.  Reeling minds are worse than reeling bodies.  Some men are born drunk like our friend Colonel Hand and that kind is beyond reformation.”

The bells rang merrily as we hurried through the swamp in the hard snow paths.

“We’re goin’ to move,” said my uncle presently.  “We’ve agreed to get out by the middle o’ May.”

“How does that happen?” I asked.

“I settled with Grimshaw and agreed to go.  If it hadn’t ‘a’ been for Wright and Baldwin we wouldn’t ‘a’ got a cent.  They threatened to bid against him at the sale.  So he settled.  We’re goin’ to have a new home.  We’ve bought a hundred an’ fifty acres from Abe Leonard.  Goin’ to build a new house in the spring.  It will be nearer the village.”

He playfully nudged my ribs with his elbow.

“We’ve had a little good luck, Bart,” he went on.  “I’ll tell ye what it is if you won’t say anything about it.”

I promised.

“I dunno as it would matter much,” he continued, “but I don’t want to do any braggin’.  It ain’t anybody’s business but ours, anyway.  An old uncle over in Vermont died three weeks ago and left us thirty-eight hundred dollars.  It was old Uncle Ezra Baynes o’ Hinesburg.  Died without a chick or child.  Your aunt and me slipped down to Potsdam an’ took the stage an’ went over an’ got the money.  It was more money than I ever see before in my life.  We put it in the bank in Potsdam to keep it out o’ Grimshaw’s hands.  I wouldn’t trust that man as fur as you could throw a bull by the tail.”