The Lost Gold Piece

After the First World War, a small group of veterans returned to their village in France. Most of them managed to get along quite well, but one Francois Lebeau, who had been gassed and never recovered his strength-was unable to work regularly. In time he became poverty-stricken. Yet he was too proud to accept charity from the people in the village.

Once each year the veterans held a reunion dinner. On one of these occasions they met in the home of Jules Grandin, who had made a good deal of money and had grown fat and pompous. Grandin produced a curiosity—a large coin on whose age, rarity and value he dwelt at some length. Each man examined it with interest as it passed around the long table. All, however, had drunk wine freely and the room resounded with noisy talk, so that the gold piece was soon forgotten. Later, when Grandin remembered it and asked for it, the coin was missing.

Instantly there arose a hubbub of questions and denials. Finally the village attorney suggested everyone be searched, to which all agreed—except Lebeau. His companions looked at him with surprise.

"You refuse, then?" asked Grandin.

Lebeau flushed. "Yes," he said, I cannot allow it.

"Do you realize," asked the owner of the gold piece, "what your refusal implies?

"I did not steal the gold piece, and I will not submit to a search," Lebeau answered.

One by one, the rest of the group turned out their pockets. When the coin failed to appear, attention was focused once more on poor Lebeau.

"Surely you will not persist in your refusal?" the attorney demanded. Lebeau made no reply. Grandin stalked out of the room in anger. No one addressed another word to Lebeau and, amid the pitying stares of his friends, he walked out with the hangdog air of a prisoner and returned to his home.

From that day, Lebeau was a disgraced man. People averted their eves when they met him. He grew poorer, and when his wife died not long afterward no one knew or cared whet her it was from want or shame.

A few years later, when the incident had become almost legendary, Grandin made some alterations in his house. A workman found the gold coin, buried in dirt between planks of the floor in the room where the reunion had been held.

Pompous though he was, Grandin was a just man and now that he had proof that Lebeau was innocent he was quick to make amends. Hurrying to Lebeau's humble home, he told him of the amazing discovery of the coin and apologized for having suspected him.

"But," he concluded, "you knew that the gold piece was not on your person—why did you not allow yourself to be searched?"

Lebeau, shabby, old before his time, looked at Grandin blankly. "Because I was a thief," he said brokenly. "For weeks my family and I had not had enough to eat—and my pockets were full of food that I had taken from the table to carry home to my wife and starving children."