s. Ellison to pause for a moment, open the doors and look within.

She smiled as she glanced over the shelves, with the odds and ends of
boyish valuables arranged there; a book of stamps; some queer old
coloured prints of Indian wars; birds' nests; fishing tackle; a
collection of birds' eggs and coins. There were some two score of these
last, set up endwise in small wooden racks. She glanced them over--and
one, bright and shiny, attracted her attention. She took it up and held
it to the light. Then she uttered a cry and sank down on the floor.

Strangely enough, when John and Benny Ellison rushed in, at the sound of
her voice, she was sitting there, sobbing over the thing; and they
thought her taken suddenly ill. But she started up, at the sight of
Benny Ellison, and asked, in a broken voice, how he had come by it. And
when he had told her, she seemed amazed and strangely troubled.

"Then someone must have dropped it there recently," she exclaimed. "How
could that be? It must be the same. I never saw another like it. Oh,
what can it mean?"

Strangest of all to Benny Ellison, she would not return the coin to his
collection; but held it fast, and only promised that she would
recompense him for it. He went to bed, sullen and surly over the loss of
his treasure. Mrs. Ellison held the coin in her hand, gazing upon it as
though it had some curious power of fascination, as she went to her room
and shut the door.

CHAPTER XVIII

GRANNY THORNTON'S SECRET

The second day following these happenings, Tim Reardon sat on a bank of
the stream, a short distance above the Ellison dam, fishing. There was
no off-season in the matter of fishing, for Little Tim. Nobody else
thought of trying for the pickerel now. But Tim Reardon fished the
stream from early spring until the ice came; and, in the winter, he
chopped through the ice, and fished that way, in the deep holes that he
knew.

He was no longer barefoot, for the days were chilly. A stout pair of
shoes protected his feet, which he kicked together as he dangled a long
pole out from the shore. He was fishing in deep water now, with a lead
sinker attached to his line; and, beside him, was a milk-can filled with
water and containing live shiners for bait. These he had caught in the
brook.

The fish weren't biting, but Little Tim was a patient fisherman. He was
so absorbed, in fact, in the thought that every next minute to come he
must surely get the longed-for bite, that