The copy of Bamford's lines was not there. Oh! perhaps he might
have given it away; but then must it not have been to Jem? It was
his gun.
And she set to with redoubled vigour to examine the deal box which
served as chair, and which had once contained her father's Sunday
clothes, in the days when he could afford to have Sunday clothes.
He had redeemed his better coat from the pawn-shop before he left,
that she had noticed. Here was his old one. What rustled under her
hand in the pocket?
The paper! "O father!"
Yes, it fitted; jagged end to jagged end, letter to letter, and even
the part which Esther had considered blank had its tallying mark
with the larger piece, its tails of ys and gs. And then, as if that
were not damning evidence enough, she felt again, and found some
little bullets or shot (I don't know which you would call them) in
that same pocket, along with a small paper parcel of gunpowder. As
she was going to replace the jacket, having abstracted the paper,
and bullets, etc., she saw a woollen gun-case made of that sort of
striped horse-cloth you must have seen a thousand times appropriated
to such a purpose.
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