Read "Freaks of Fortune" by Oliver Optic online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A week of indescribable misery to Nathan Fairfield passed away; but no trace of the robber or the money had been obtained. The constables and the deputy sheriff had visited the premises, and carefully considered all the facts, without affording the miserable man a particle of consolation. He groaned from morning till night, forlorn and desolate, declaring that he should come to want, and die in the poorhouse.
Probably the money the wretch had lost was not a fifth part of his fortune, and he was in no more danger of coming to want than the sea was of being dried up. But he felt as though he had lost all; and if he had been stripped of everything, he could hardly have suffered more. He felt poor, and wanted to earn money in some way. The dog-fish season had opened favorably, and he was actually preparing to go into the business of catching them. Dock Vincent had promised him the use of a dory, -- for he could not afford to buy one, -- and he had taken Levi's old lines and repaired them for use.