With two sticks they lifted it into the water and waited, impatiently
enough, until they were sure it was cool. Then Dorothy, asserting her
right of discovery, opened it with trembling fingers.

"Why-ee!" she gasped.

Upon a bed of wet cotton lay a large brooch, made wholly of clustered
diamonds, and a coral necklace, somewhat injured by the fire.

"Whose is it?" demanded Dorothy, when she recovered the faculty of
speech.

"I should say," returned Harlan, after due deliberation, "that it belonged
to you."

"After this," she said, slowly, her eyes wide with wonder, "we'll take
everything apart before we burn it."

Harlan was turning the brooch over in his hand and roughly estimating its
value at two thousand dollars. "Here's something on the back," he said.
"'R. from E., March 12, 1865.'"

"Rebecca from Ebeneezer," cried Dorothy. "Oh, Harlan, it's ours! Don't you
remember the letter said: 'my house and all its contents to my beloved
nephew, James Harlan Carr'?"

"I remember," said Harlan. But his conscience was uneasy, none the less.

III

The First Caller

As Mr. Blake had heard, there was "one hull room mighty nigh plum full o'
nothin' but books"; a grievous waste, indeed, when one already "had a
book." It was the front room, opposite the parlour, and every door and
window in it could be securely bolted from the inside. If any one desired
unbroken privacy, it could be had in the library as nowhere else in the
house.

The book-shelves were made of rough pine, unplaned, unpainted, and were
scarcely a seemly setting for the treasure they bore. But in looking at
the books, one perceived that their owner had been one who passed by the
body in his eager search for the soul.

Here were no fine editions, no luxurious, costly volumes in full levant.
Illuminated pages, rubricated headings, and fine illustrations were
conspicuous by their absence. For the most part, the books were simply but
serviceably bound in plain cloth covers. Many a paper-covered book had
been bound by its purchaser in pasteboard, flimsy enough in quality, yet
further strengthened by cloth at the back. Cheap, pirated editions were so
many that Harlan wondered whether his uncle had not been wholly without
conscience in the matter of book-buying.

Shelf after shelf stretched across the long wall, with its company of mute
consolers whose master was no more. The fine flowering of the centuries,
like a single precious drop of imperisha