I have a kind of hunch that the old fellow—put some more wood on, Roy—I have a kind of a hunch that he sent the kid a ring, a cameo ring, with the head of President Lincoln on it. I can see old honest Abe now—right there where the new sticks are blazing up. Huh? Maybe it’s only a crazy notion; what do you say? But I’ve doped out a kind of a notion that that old fellow got the ring when he started off to war; that somebody or other presented one to each fellow that left the village. I’d give a doughnut to know where that village is.
Anyway, the old man wore it on the second finger of his left hand and I kind of think he wanted that kid of his to do the same—over there in the trenches.
Maybe I’m just a sort of a day dreamer, but that’s the picture I’ve had in my mind ever since I was fishing with Jake Holden. And it seems to all fit together now when I look right there in that blaze. Pretty good camp-fire yarn, hey? Not so worse? Just look into the fire yourselves and think about that letter. Nothing but a kind of fancy, hey? Faces in the blaze and all that sort of stuff. Never saw me get sentimental before, did you—Skeezeks?
The funny part of the whole thing is that the man we saw in the boat _didn’t have any second finger on his left hand_. It couldn’t have been his finger the writer of the letter meant.
Gee whiz, I didn’t even know that he had stopped talking. I was just looking into the blaze and I could see the whole thing right there. Maybe it wasn’t true at all, but anyway, I could see it. Especially I could see the old man. That’s just the way it is with camp-fires.
Then, all of a sudden Harry Donnelle poked up the fire and began to laugh. “Funny, hey?” he said.
I said, “Do you think the dead man in the boat stole the money and the letter?”
“The letter happened to be with the money,” Harry said; “I don’t know that I think anything in particular. But how did a sailor with the second finger of his left hand gone, happen to have a letter asking him to wear a ring on that finger. How about the soldier who is warned against going where he will get robbed? Maybe he went, after all, and got robbed. We might start a search for a soldier who happens to have a second finger on his left hand. But then, quite a few soldiers enjoy that distinction. So there we are—up a tree. But here is a sailor with two hundred odd dollars and a letter referring to two hundred dollars. There is something about him wearing a ring on a certain finger and he doesn’t happen to have that finger. Funny.