Chapter 24
A Recovered Pocket Book In the days when Brighton, Massachusetts was the greatest cattle market in the eastern states, a certain farmer went there to sell his cows and realized a good price for them. A pickpocket and miscellaneous scallywag, disguised as a trader, had seen with longing
that the farmer had stowed away in his garments, and after the manner of such knights of fortune, had found an excuse to introduce himself and treat the happy agriculturist to three or four glasses of whiskey and a drugged cigar. This combination took effect presently while the farmer was resting under the shade of a tree, and he gradually collapsed on the grass and addressed himself to sleep.
His rest had not been of many minutes' duration when an acquaintance shook him and asked him if he would change a bill. He felt in his pocket for the money, but it was gone, and so was his friend of an hour. He was awake now. Far down the road he saw the fellow running, and although a Percy man himself, he gave
so lively a chase and bawled stop-thief so loudly that the rogue maid toured a woman who sat beside the way, enveloped in a cloak and rocking a child on her knee, tossed something at her, and was off, over a fence and out of sight behind some sheds. The farmer arrived panting. Aha! he cried to the woman, you are that scoundrel's confederate, are you?
Give me that pocket-book. And with a dash at his treasure he wrested it from her hand. Then plucking aside the cloak, he looked into the face of his own wife. It chanced that the farmer's wife had started to town to do some shopping several hours after her husband had left home, and that near the market her sympathy had been awakened
by a forlorn woman in a faded dress, who held a child and swayed back and forth, moaning as in pain, and muttering sentences from which the spectator surmised that she awaited, yet dreaded, the arrival of a husband who was engaged in some wrongdoing. She begged the farmer's wife to hold her baby while she explored the cattle yards and inns, that she might find her husband and persuade him to go home before he fell
into trouble. This the farmer's wife undertook willingly enough, for she was a motherly soul, and to protect herself and the infant from dust she slipped the thin black cloak over her head in the same fashion in which its owner had worn it. In a few minutes along comes the thief at a run, and not realizing that his wife's place
had been taken by a stranger, being intent only on saving his bacon, he emptied his pockets into her lap saying, Look out for these, and continued his flight. If her surprise at this action was great, it increased when she recognized her husband's pocketbook stuffed as never before, and it was at its height when her lord confronted her and claimed his money.
Great was the astonishment of the man to find in his partner the apparent consort of a thief. That matters were explained directly, and the couple were put about on finding that in addition to their own wealth, they had become custodians of one other well-filled pocketbook, a purse of silver, a gold watch and chain, and half a dozen silver spoons. The pickpockets' wife returned presently to claim her babe, and sat by the wayside
again to wait for her scamp of a husband. The thief was caught in a few days, and you may be sure that the farmer's wife did not allow the wallet to leave her sight, till she had obtained from it the price of the most resplendent bonnet that ever was shown in the village church, and she wore it with great pride on the next Sunday.
