wledge of its
existence, at unwary times. They had swept carefully about it year
after year, and wondered if it were indeed full of gold as the
neighbors used to hint; but no matter how much found a way in, little
had found the way out. They had been hampered all their lives for
money, and in consequence had developed a wonderful facility for
spinning and weaving, mending and making. Their small farm was an
early example of intensive farming; they were allowed to use its
products in a niggardly way, but the money that was paid for wool, for
hay, for wood, and for summer crops had all gone into the chest. The
old captain was a hard master; he rarely commended and often blamed.
Hannah trembled before him, but Betsey faced him sturdily, being
amazingly like him, with a feminine difference; as like as a ruled
person can be to a ruler, for the discipline of life had taught the
man to aggress, the woman only to defend. In the chest was a fabled
sum of prize-money, besides these slender earnings of many years; all
the sisters' hard work and self-sacrifice were there in money and a
mysterious largess besides. All their lives they had been looking
forward to this hour of ownership.

There was a solemn hush in the house; the two sisters were safe from
their neighbors, and there was no fear of interruption at such an hour
in that hard-working community, tired with a day's work that had been
early begun. If any one came knocking at the door, both door and
windows were securely fastened.

The eager sisters bent above the chest, they held their breath and
talked in softest whispers. With stealthy tread a man came out of the
woods near by.

He stopped to listen, came nearer, stopped again, and then crept close
to the old house. He stepped upon the banking, next the window with
the warped shutter; there was a knothole in it high above the women's
heads, towards the top. As they leaned over the chest, an eager eye
watched them. If they had turned that way suspiciously, the eye might
have caught the flicker of the lamp and betrayed itself. No, they were
too busy: the eye at the shutter watched and watched.

There was a certain feeling of relief in the sisters' minds because
the contents of the chest were so commonplace at first sight. There
were some old belongings dating back to their father's early days of
seafaring. They unfolded a waistcoat pattern or two of figured stuff
which they had seen him fold and put away again and again