ouse with ill-concealed emotion.

All Summer, so far, he and Elaine had been good friends. They had laughed
and joked and worked together in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion. The
arrival of Mr. Perkins and his sudden admiration of Elaine had
crystallised the situation. Dick knew now what caused the violent antics
of his heart--a peaceful and well-behaved organ which had never before
been so disturbed by a woman.

"I've got it," said Dick, to himself, deeply shamed. "Moonlight, poetry,
mit-holding, and all the rest of it. Never having had it before, it's
going hard with me. Why in the devil wasn't I taught to write doggerel
when I was in college? A fellow don't stand any show nowadays unless he's
a pocket edition of Byron."

He went on through the orchard at a run, instinctively healing a troubled
mind by wearying the body. At the outer edge of it, he paused.

Suspended by a singularly strong bit of twine, a small, grinning skull
hung from the lower branch of an apple tree, far out on the limb. "Cat's
skull," thought Dick. "Wonder who hung it up there?"

He lingered, idly, for a moment or two, then observed that a small patch
of grass directly underneath it was of that season's growth. His curiosity
fully awake, he determined to dig a bit, though he had dug fruitlessly in
many places since he came to the Jack-o'-Lantern.

"Uncle couldn't do anything conventional," he said to himself, "and I'm
pretty sure he wouldn't want any of his relations to have his money. Here
goes, just for luck!"

He went back to the barn for the spade, which already had fresh earth on
it--the evidence of an early morning excavation privately made by Mrs.
Smithers in a spot where she had dreamed gold was hidden. He went off to
the orchard with it, whistling, his progress being furtively watched with
great interest by the sour-faced handmaiden in the kitchen.

Back in the orchard again, he worked feverishly, possessed by a pleasant
thrill of excitement, somewhat similar to that conceivably enlivening the
humdrum existence of Captain Kidd. Dick was far from surprised when his
spade struck something hard, and, his hands trembling with eagerness, he
lifted out a tin box of the kind commonly used for private papers.

It was locked, but a twist of his muscular hands sufficed to break it
open. Then he saw that it was a spring lock, and that, with grim,
characteristic humour, Uncle Ebeneezer had placed the key inside the box.
There were papers