CHAPTER V.

LOST.

"I CAN'T find it," said Bessie, about a month after the fishing party. "I have hunted high and low. I cannot find it anywhere."

Her mother, whose health was now greatly improving, was sitting in the kitchen by the blazing fire, for the weather was gradually growing colder, and the logs were piled up a little higher on the hearth, day by day. She was busy finishing quilting a white counterpane for a neighbor who employed her frequently to sew for her family. It was full of quaint devices, stars and diamonds forming the border, while in the centre was a wonderful little lamb in the act of performing some very frisky gambols.

"Cannot find what?" demanded Bessie's mother.

"My Madeira nut!" exclaimed Bessie, in a tone of despair. "Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?"

Her mother stopped quilting and turned to look at her.

"Where did you put it last?" she asked. "Surely, Bessie, you ought to remember that."

"I have never put it in but one spot," replied Bessie; "I left it in the drawer of my little table. When you grew better, and the table wasn't needed any more in your bedroom for you to stand your medicines on, I got Nathan to help me take it up stairs in the garret, just as you bade me, that day last week when he was here spending the afternoon. I thought I would still keep the nut there, for I had grown used to the place, and I liked to go to the drawer and pull it out to look at it sometimes. Oh dear, oh dear!" and Bessie burst into tears.

"Perhaps you haven't searched well," said her mother; "come, I'll go up stairs with you. I shouldn't wonder if it had got caught in the top of the drawer. I have heard of such things. I lost a handkerchief that way myself once."

"But," sobbed Bessie, "it couldn't get caught like that without being broken, because it was so thin shelled, and then I should have seen some of the pieces; or the money would have fallen back into the drawer, and I would have found _that_."

"How much was in it?" asked her mother. "There could not have been a great deal more than the very first silver Mr. Dart brought you for the cresses, for the rest we have spent from time to time as fast as it was received. I was sorry enough to do it too."

"I wasn't," said Bessie, brightening up a little through her tears, "I was glad and thankful, mother, to have it to spend. If it had not been for the cresses, what would have become of us all the while you were so sick?"

"God always provides for the poor and needy," said her mother gravely, "and I am certain that He who knows even when sparrows fall would not let us suffer. If this help had not sprung up for us through Mr. Dart, something else would have presented itself. Come, now, let us go to the garret and look for the money."

Bessie darted ahead of her mother as they went up the stairs, with a bound and a spring that brought her to the head of the flight when her mother was on the second step. She was young and agile, and besides she was greatly excited and in haste to begin the search. She did not gain any thing by her speed, however, for she had to wait at the landing until her mother had toiled slowly up.

"Now let us look at the drawer," said her mother, when, after pausing a moment to breathe, she moved towards the table. It was a poor little shaky thing, and of a very dilapidated appearance. It was not to be wondered at that as soon as her recovery made its presence unnecessary in her room, she had banished it to the garret whence it had been brought.

"You see there is no trace of it," said Bessie, mournfully, as she watched her mother remove the articles the drawer contained one by one.

No, it was not there indeed.

Bessie pulled out the drawer, and even took the trouble to examine the aperture which contained it, but all was in vain.

"It is certainly very strange," said her mother. "I do not see how, if it were really in this drawer, it could have got out without help."

"Nor I either," added Bessie, half laughing at the idea of a nut walking off of itself. "Oh, if I could only find it! I do not mind the nut so much, although dear uncle James gave it to me last Christmas, as I do the money, for you know, mother, I asked you if I might not keep it forever, that is as long as I lived, to remember Mr. Dart's kindness by, and to show, when I grew up, as my first earnings. Oh, I was so proud of those three pieces of silver!"

"What were they?" asked her mother, looking over the contents of the drawer again.

"_Don't you remember?_" exclaimed Bessie, in a tone of great surprise, as though it were really remarkable to have forgotten. "Don't you remember? There were two twenty-five cent pieces and a ten cent piece!" and Bessie broke into fresh weeping again.

"Don't cry about it, Bessie," said her mother, "you know crying cannot bring them back."

"I wouldn't care," said the little girl, "if it had been _yesterday's_ money, but it was the first, _the very first_ I ever earned of myself, and I meant to save it always!"

"I think I can tell you exactly how it happened, my child. Just look at the untidy appearance of your drawer. There are scraps in it of a great many things that ought not to be there. Here is a broken slate, your worn-out work-basket, your summer sun-bonnet, empty bottles, spools of cotton, and last but not least, about a quart of hickory nuts,--a nice array, I am sure."

Bessie hung her head. She was ashamed to have her disorderly ways remarked. A want of neatness was her greatest fault.

"I was just going to clear it up to-morrow," she murmured, twitching rather uneasily at her apron strings.

"Oh, my little girl, that 'just going' of yours is one of the saddest things I can hear you say. You are always '_just going_,' and yet the time seldom comes that you do as you intend. You are full of good intentions that you are either too lazy or too thoughtless ever to fulfil. If I did not watch over you very sharply, every thing you have would be like this miserable looking drawer, a complete mass of disorder."

"Oh, I hope not!" cried Bessie, quite appalled at the news.

"Now," continued her mother, "I can trace the losing of your money back to your want of neatness. In all probability, when you came to this drawer some time to get a few of your hickory nuts, you have caught up the Madeira among the others, carried it down stairs, and left the whole pile lying as you often do, somewhere around the garden till you feel in the humor for cracking them. I want to know, in the first place, why your hickory nuts were ever put in this drawer among your books and spools of cotton."

Bessie had been growing warmer and warmer while her mother was speaking, until it seemed to her as though the tips of her ears were on fire. Conviction forced itself upon her mind that her Madeira nut must have gone in the way her mother described, for she remembered distinctly having often taken two or three handfuls of nuts and carried them in her apron down to the garden, leaving them lying carelessly about her favorite resorts, under the old apple-tree for instance, or on the big flat stone by the brook. She had many just such idle, unsystematic ways of managing. She felt she was in the wrong, so she scarcely knew how to defend herself.

"I don't know why I put the nuts there, mother," she said, "unless it was to get them out of the way. They are those that are left of the basket full I found in the woods by Mr. Dart's farm, one day when Nelly and I went there together."

"When _will_ you learn neatness, Bessie?"

"I don't know," sobbed Bessie, "never, I 'spect. Seems to me I grow worse and worse. I don't believe I shall be half as good when I am ten as I am now when I'm only nine. I wish I had never gone nutting, and then this would not have happened."

"No," said her mother, smiling, "it never would, for then in all probability you would not have met and become friendly with our good Mr. Dart. Don't make rash wishes, my little Bess, because you are vexed."

"Oh, now I know," cried Bessie, as if struck with a sudden idea, "I put the nuts in that drawer, mother, for _safety_. Before that they were lying spread out to dry on the floor, over by that barrel. I remember thinking that they were thinning out pretty fast, and that the rats must have carried some away. I thought that if I put them in the drawer they would last until I used them up."

"Well," said her mother, "that betters the case a little; but still I must insist that you could have found many more appropriate places. If you had put them in the barrel it would have been far better than among your spools, and I do not know but that it would have been quite as safe."

Bessie's mother went up to the barrel in question, as she spoke, and scarcely knowing what she was doing, shoved it a little with her foot. It was empty, and yielded easily. This change in its position brought to view the space between it and the wall, and there, what did Bessie and her mother see but a nice little pile of hickory nut-shells!

Bessie uttered an exclamation and sprang forward. She took up two or three, and found that a hole had been neatly nibbled in each and the meat subtracted.

"I told you so," she said sorrowfully, letting the shells drop slowly back to the pile; "now I know why my nuts disappeared so fast. I thought at first that Nathan must have helped himself to a few, when he has been here. He often runs up stairs to get something or other to play with, when he stays the whole afternoon, and I guessed the nuts had tempted him. Poor Nathan! I ought to have known better."

Bessie's mother stooped and examined every shell in the pile.

"Perhaps," said she, "master rat has carried off the Madeira too."

"Oh, I hope so," cried the little girl; "do you see any of the pieces of it, mother? He could not harm the money you know, and that is what I care most about getting back."

"It is not here," said her mother, rising, "but perhaps we shall hear something of it yet. I want you to put on your sun-bonnet and look carefully about the garden. Take an hour, or two hours if necessary, but do it thoroughly. I must go down stairs now to my sewing."

Bessie found it very tedious, sad work searching for her lost treasure that afternoon. She went to each of her favorite haunts, and examined them with great minuteness, but no trace of the nut was to be discovered. One thing seemed to her as very strange, however, and that was, that of all the small supplies of nuts which she had lately carried down to the garden, and of which she did not remember even to have cracked a single one, not so much as a fragment of a shell was now to be found. Only the day before she had left a little strawberry basket half filled, on the big stone by the brook, to which the reader remembers she once led Mr. Dart to survey the cresses. She had meant to sit there and crack and pick them out at once, at her leisure, but something attracting her attention as usual, she did not do so, but deserted both basket and nuts. The basket was there still, but to her surprise, it was quite empty. It lay on its side near where she had left it. No mark of any one having been there was to be seen in the muddy grass.

Bessie took up the basket and gazed at it in silent astonishment. What could it mean? Who would help themselves to her nuts in this way? and why was the basket not carried off also? She was still sitting on the stone thinking the whole singular affair over, when she heard Nathan call to her from the next house, where he lived. She looked up, and there he was leaning over the fence. She had just been thinking of him, and it made her feel unpleasantly to see him.

"Bess," cried he, "what do you think? father is going to give me a ride to town to-morrow."

Bessie scarcely heard him as she rose, and holding up her empty basket, said reproachfully,--

"Oh, Nathan, how could you climb over the fence and take my nuts?"

"Nuts!" echoed Nathan, "what nuts? I don't know any thing about your nuts."

"Somebody does," said Bessie, "for this basket was half full yesterday, and now it is empty. I left it here on the stone all night."

"I never saw it," said Nathan; "that's mighty pretty of you to accuse a fellow of stealing. You had better be a little careful."

"I didn't say you _stole_, Nathan, I only--"

"Who cares for your old nuts?" interrupted Nathan, "they're not worth the carrying off. Next thing you'll be saying I meddle with your cresses."

"No," said Bessie, a little sadly, "I shouldn't say that. There are only two or three baskets-full of nice ones left, and by next week Mr. Dart will have taken them all to market. I don't _care_ about my nuts, Nathan, it isn't that, but I should like to know who took them."

"Well, _I_ didn't, anyhow," said Nathan, "and since you are so cross about it, I shan't stay to talk to you."

He clambered down from the fence and walked away whistling, with his hands in his pockets.

Some way, Bessie felt a presentiment that Nathan knew more than he said about the nuts. She concluded to go in and ask her mother if it could possibly be that he had taken the missing money.

Her mother listened in silence to all she had to utter on the subject. Bessie told her that Nathan was aware, and had been aware from the beginning, where the Madeira nut was kept. She said he was present when she first put it in the drawer, which was indeed true, as the reader knows, and that often since, they had looked at it together.

"My dear," said her mother, when Bessie concluded, "I do not see that you have any thing more than _conjecture_ on which to found your suspicions. It is very wrong to act on conjecture only."

"But everybody thinks Nat is a bad boy," said Bessie eagerly; "the neighbors say he will do almost any thing. Only last Sunday he pinned the minister's coat tails to the shade of the church window, as he stood talking to Deacon Danbury, after meeting was over. When the minister went to walk off, down came the shade on his head and smashed his new hat. _I_ think that a boy who will do that would take things that do not belong to him."

"Perhaps he might," said her mother quietly.

"Well, shall I ask him about it," demanded Bessie.

"My dear child," said her mother gravely, "your ideas of justice are one-sided. The world would not thrive if every one acted on the principles you seem to advocate. Many an honest man might be imprisoned as a thief if people should take mere _conjecture_ for proof of guilt, while at the same time, many a thief would pass for an honest man. In law, all persons are supposed innocent, until they are _proved_ guilty. You did not _see_ Nathan take any thing belonging to you, nor do you know any one who did. It would be the height of cruelty then, to accuse him without absolute proof."

"Yes," said Bessie, "but suppose he _did_ take the nut after all."

"Then," said her mother, "we can only leave the case to that Judge who doeth all things well. It is better for us to suppose him innocent even while he may be guilty, than to suppose him guilty when he is innocent."

"I wish I _knew_," said Bessie, as she took up her shears and basket to go out to get the cresses for the next day's market.

"The cold weather will soon put a stop to the cresses, I am afraid," remarked her mother, after a pause.

"Yes," said Bessie, "Mr. Dart says they are getting poor now; they do not grow fast after cutting, any more, on account of the frost."

"Never mind," said her mother cheerfully, "in the spring, which after all is not so _very_ far off, they will become fine again, and then you can begin to sell as fast as ever. If I am well then, as I hope and trust I shall be, we must not touch a penny of your money, Bessie. It shall all be saved to send you regularly to Miss Milly's school, and buy books for you to learn out of, and perhaps, who knows, there will be something left to put in the bank besides. This fall the cresses have fed our poor, suffering bodies, but next spring, if nothing happens, they shall feed my Bessie's mind."

"School!" cried Bessie, dropping both the basket and the scissors in her delight, "shall I _really_ go to school? And all through the water-cresses? Why, we never thought our dear little brook would make us so rich, did we, mother?"