And then Jed Winslow did what was perhaps the first dishonest thing he had ever done.  He put that proof in the drawer of the oak writing table and said nothing of his having found it.  Later he made a wooden frame for it and covered it with glass.  It faded and turned black as all proofs do, but still Jed kept it in the drawer and often, very often, opened that drawer and looked at it.  Now he looked at it for a long, long time and when he rose to go back to the shop there was in his mind, along with the dream that had been there for days and weeks, for the first time the faintest dawning of a hope.  Ruth’s impulsive speech, hastily and unthinkingly made, was repeating itself over and over in his brain.  “I wonder if you know what you have come to mean to me?” What had he come to mean to her?

An hour later, as he sat at his bench, Captain Hunniwell came banging in once more.  But this time the captain looked troubled.

“Jed,” he asked, anxiously, “have you found anything here since I went out?”

Jed looked up.

“Eh?” he asked, absently.  “Found?  What have you found, Sam?”

“I?  I haven’t found anything.  I’ve lost four hundred dollars, though.  You haven’t found it, have you?”

Still Jed did not appear to comprehend.  He had been wandering the rose-bordered paths of fairyland and was not eager to come back to earth.

“Eh?” he drawled.  “You’ve—­what?”

His friend’s peppery temper broke loose.

“For thunder sakes wake up!” he roared.  “I tell you I’ve lost four hundred dollars of the fourteen hundred I told you I collected from Sylvester Sage over to Wapatomac this mornin’.  I had three packages of bills, two of five hundred dollars each and one of four hundred.  The two five hundred packages were in the inside pocket of my overcoat where I put ’em.  But the four hundred one’s gone.  What I want to know is, did it drop out when I took off my coat here in the shop?  Do you get that through your head, finally?”

It had gotten through.  Jed now looked as troubled as his friend.  He rose hastily and went over to the pile of boards upon which Captain Sam had thrown his coat upon entering the shop on his previous visit that day.  Together they searched, painstakingly and at length.  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.  And that was a darned careless place to put it, too,” he added, testily.  “I’d have given any feller that worked for me the devil for doin’ such a thing.”

Jed nodded, sympathetically.  “But you might have left it there to Sylvester’s,” he said.  “Have you thought of telephonin’ to find out?”