. Once he had
given Betsey a gay China silk handkerchief, and here were two more
like it. They had not known what a store of treasures might be waiting
for them, but the reality so far was disappointing; there was much
spare room to begin with, and the wares within looked pinched and few.
There were bundles of papers, old receipts, some letters in two not
very thick bundles, some old account books with worn edges, and a
blackened silver can which looked very small in comparison with their
anticipation, being an heirloom and jealously hoarded and secreted by
the old man. The women began to feel as if his lean angry figure were
bending with them over the sea chest.

They opened a package wrapped in many layers of old soft paper--a
worked piece of Indian muslin, and an embroidered red scarf which they
had never seen before. "He must have brought them home to mother,"
said Betsey with a great outburst of feeling. "He never was the same
man again; he never would let nobody else have them when he found she
was dead, poor old father!"

Hannah looked wistfully at the treasures. She rebuked herself for
selfishness, but she thought of her pinched girlhood and the delight
these things would have been. Ah yes! it was too late now for many
things besides the sprigged muslin. "If I was young as I was once
there's lots o' things I'd like to do now I'm free," said Hannah with
a gentle sigh; but her sister checked her anxiously--it was fitting
that they should preserve a semblance of mourning even to themselves.

The lamp stood in a kitchen chair at the chest's end and shone full
across their faces. Betsey looked intent and sober as she turned over
the old man's treasures. Under the India mull was an antique pair of
buff trousers, a waistcoat of strange old-fashioned foreign stuff, and
a blue coat with brass buttons, brought home from over seas, as the
women knew, for their father's wedding clothes. They had seen him
carry them out at long intervals to hang them in the spring sunshine;
he had been very feeble the last time, and Hannah remembered that she
had longed to take them from his shaking hands.

"I declare for 't I wish 't we had laid him out in 'em, 'stead o' the
robe," she whispered; but Betsey made no answer. She was kneeling
still, but held herself upright and looked away. It was evident that
she was lost in her own thoughts.

"I can't find nothing else by eyesight," she muttered. "This chest
never 'd be so heavy with t