Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/283

Rh boy. He would like to have spoken, and put an end to further revelations, bat lie dared not trust himself to speak. Then Eva went on again—

"I come now to the most painful part of the story. This boy had been with pa six months, when one Saturday afternoon he left him in charge of the office, but he had scarcely got a hundred yards from the door when he remembered that he had left a bank-note on his desk, and instantly turned back for it. "Well, when he got into the office the note was gone. Nobody had been in the office but the boy, and yet he denied ever having seen it. Well, pa was quite in a way. He searched everywhere, but it was not to be found. So the boy was apprehended on suspicion, and taken to the police-station. I was in a great way, too, for it was through me that pa had employed the boy; still, I could not believe that he was dishonest. At the trial he was given the benefit of the doubt and dismissed, and has never been seen or heard of since. But the strangest part of all is, about a month later pa wanted to look at the Directory—a book he does not use very often—and the first thing on which his eye fell as he opened the book was the missing bank-note. He was in a way when he came home, and we chatted about nothing else all the evening, for he remembered then very distinctly how he had laid the note on the open book, and before he went out had shut it up quickly, and placed it on the shelf. What troubled pa so much was, the boy had been robbed of his character, for the magistrates had