e of the
said proofs on the shop floor where the little girl had dropped it.
It happened to be a photograph of Ruth, sitting alone.

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. Wher