“The letter happened to be with the money,” Harry said; “I don’t know
that I think anything in particular. But how did a sailor with the
second finger of his left hand gone, happen to have a letter asking him
to wear a ring on that finger. How about the soldier who is warned
against going where he will get robbed? Maybe he went, after all, and
got robbed. We might start a search for a soldier who happens to have a
second finger on his left hand. But then, quite a few soldiers enjoy
that distinction. So there we are—up a tree. But here is a sailor with
two hundred odd dollars and a letter referring to two hundred dollars.
There is something about him wearing a ring on a certain finger and he
doesn’t happen to have that finger. Funny.
“Well then, here’s a query—as long as queries don’t cost anything.
Might not the sailor have robbed the soldier of his two hundred and odd
dollars? And just neglected to destroy the letter that was with it? You
see, kids, I just ran plunk into the middle of the thing and I’d like to
get hold of one end or the other. Somebody or other got a ring when he
went away to war fifty years ago. He lived in a village. Who was he?
Whoever he is, he’s having a hard job making two ends meet. If I could
find him I think I’d turn over this money to him. Now at the other end
of the line, somewhere, is a fellow that ran chances of being
robbed—reckless, like your Uncle Dudley. He’s got a ring with President
Lincoln’s face cut on it—a cameo. I’d like to find _him_.
“But you see I haven’t any way of finding either of them. The only thing
I’m sure about is that the dead sailor couldn’t have worn the ring. His
finger had been gone many years, that’s sure. So what are we going to do
about it? I guess we’ll go to bed. But that isn’t getting us anywhere,
is it?”
“Funny, hey? Kind of a mystery after all—Skeezeks.”
* * * * *
I guess every one of us lay awake thinking about it that night. Anyway,
I know I did. And most all the time till the day we got home, we kept
talking about it. Harry Donnelle would always laugh and say maybe there
wasn’t anything to it at all and that if he knew who the sailor was,
he’d go and give the money to his people—probably.
He said he guessed the camp-fire up at Temple Camp was what started him
seeing pictures. But always he would say how it was funny that a man
without his second finger should have that letter on him. But he said
that as long as there wasn’t any finger, it couldn’t point anywheres,
and we should worry.
But just the same all the way home, whenever we started a camp-fire,
we’d look into it and kind of see an old soldier with white hair and a
blue coat and then we’d see a young fellow, wearing khaki, and a ring
with Lincoln’s head cut on it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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