I've got it
here in my pocket. And the salt was to be delivered for cash; it will
not be sent till it is paid for." He paused a moment in troubled
thought. "David! Call that boy. He's always hidden off somewhere."
"Here, sir," said David, standing up and coming out of the shadow
beneath the stairs.
"You will have to help me in this matter, my lad," said the judge,
kindly, forgetting his momentary irritation. "I'll have to send the
money by you."
He drew from his pocket a queer-looking roll which he called his wallet.
It was a strip of thin, fine deerskin, bound with a narrow black riband
and tied with a leathern string. The bank-notes were rolled in this, and
the gold pieces and the "bits"--which were small wedges of coin cut from
silver dollars--were in two pouches sewed across the end of the strip.
It was very seldom that this wallet of the judge's contained so large a
sum of money as on that night, for salt was dear in the wilderness. It
required eight hundred gallons of the weak salt water and many cords of
fire-wood, and the work of many men for many days, to make a single
bushel of the precious article.
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