e 'pend on me to bury that
silver what yo' gran'ma and gran'pa used to eat off o'--an' don' wan'
nobody to know nothin' 'bout it? An' y' all comin' here with guns,
like you huntin' squ'rr'ls, an' now talkin' 'bout wadin' in the
ditch!"

"But, Unc' Balla, that's the way all buccaneers do," protested Frank.

"Yes, buccaneers always go by water," said Willy.

"And we can stoop in the ditch and come in at the far end of the
garden, so nobody can see us," added Frank.

"Bookanear or bookafar,--I's gwine in dat garden and dig a hole wid my
hoe, an' I is too ole to be wadin' in a ditch like chillern. I got the
misery in my knee now, so bad I'se sca'cely able to stand. I don't
know huccome y' all ain't satisfied with the place you' ma an' I done
pick, anyways."

This was too serious a mutiny for the boys. So it was finally greed
that one gun should be returned to the office, and that they should
enter by the gate, after which Balla was to go with the boys by the
way they should show him, and see the spot they thought of.

They took him down through the weeds around the garden, crouching
under the rose-bushes, and at last stopped at a spot under the slope,
completely surrounded by shrubbery.

"Here is the spot," said Frank in a whisper, pointing under one of the
bushes.

"It's in a line with the longest limb of the big oak-tree by the
gate," added Willy, "and when this locust bush and that cedar grow to
be big trees, it will be just half-way between them."

As this seemed to Balla a very good place, he set to work at once to
dig, the two boys helping him as well as they could. It took a great
deal longer to dig the hole in the dark than they had expected, and
when they got back to the house everything was quiet.

The boys had their hats pulled over their eyes, and had turned their
jackets inside out to disguise themselves.

"It's a first-rate place! Ain't it, Unc' Balla?" they said, as they
entered the chamber where their mother and aunt were waiting for them.

"Do you think it will do, Balla?" their mother asked.

"Oh, yes, madam; it's far enough, an' they got mighty comical ways to
get dyah, wadin' in ditch an' things--it will do. I ain' sho' I kin
fin' it ag'in myself." He was not particularly enthusiastic. Now,
however, he shouldered the box, with a grunt at its weight, and the
party went slowly out through the back door into the dark. The glow of
the burning depot was still visible in the west.

Then it wa