irs and tables. The carpet, drawn
aside in one corner, disclosed a shallow aperture in the floor, from
which the boards had been lifted.

"Why-- What?" stammered the girl, all the high courage gone from her
face. "What has happened?"

He picked up a box--a common cigar box--from amid the litter of
abandoned clothing. It was quite empty save for a solitary slip of
greenish paper which had somehow adhered to the bottom.

Lydia clutched the box in both trembling hands, staring with piteous
eyes at the damning evidence of that bit of paper.

"Money!" she whispered. "He must have hidden it before--before-- Oh,
father, father!"

Chapter XXVII

History is said to repeat itself, as if indeed the world were a vast
pendulum, swinging between events now inconceivably remote, and again
menacing and near. And if in things great and heroic, so also in the
less significant aspects of life.

Mrs. Henry Daggett stood, weary but triumphant, amid the nearly
completed preparations for a reception in the new church parlors, her
broad, rosy face wearing a smile of satisfaction.

"Don't it look nice?" she said, by way of expressing her overflowing
contentment.

Mrs. Maria Dodge, evergreen wreaths looped over one arm, nodded.

"It certainly does look fine, Abby," said she. "And I guess nobody
but you would have thought of having it."

Mrs. Daggett beamed. "I thought of it the minute I heard about that
city church that done it. I call it a real tasty way to treat a
minister as nice as ours."

"So 'tis," agreed Mrs. Dodge with the air of complacent satisfaction
she had acquired since Fanny's marriage to the minister. "And I think
Wesley'll appreciate it."

Mrs. Daggett's face grew serious. Then her soft bosom heaved with
mirth.

"'Tain't everybody that's lucky enough to have a minister right in
the family," said she briskly. "Mebbe if I was to hear a sermon
preached every day in the week I'd get some piouser myself. I've been
comparing this with the fair we had last summer. It ain't so grand,
but it's newer. A fair's like a work of nature, Maria; sun and rain
and dew, and the scrapings from the henyard, all mixed with garden
ground to fetch out cabbages, potatoes or roses. God gives the
increase."

Mrs. Dodge stared at her friend in amazement.

"That sounds real beautiful, Abby," she said. "You must have thought
it all out."

"That's just what I done," confirmed Mrs. Daggett happily. "I'm
always meditating about