llings, and said--

"Try again."

Again, the stakes being trebled on a card, he lost--though the winner
this time was the third man of the company.

Then a good deal of wrangling and quarrelling in an undertone followed,
and Bet, in her room above, was awoke by it. She had been awoke before
from the same cause; but to-night she sat up in bed and listened.

The joists that divided the room in this lean-to of Mr. Skinner's
cottage, which could hardly be called a "wing," were very thin and far
apart, and a knot in one of the boards of her room had been forced out
and left a hole through which it was possible to get a peep into the
room below.

Presently the voices ceased, and she heard the stealthy footsteps of
the men retreating across the yard, and then, as they reached the deep
soft sand, they were heard no longer.

Bet got up, and standing on tip-toe tried to look out of the little
attic window that lighted her room. As she did so the hole in the
floor attracted her, for she could see the light through it from the
room below.

She lay down on the boards, and, looking through, could see her uncle
at the table.

He had a small box before him, from which he took out some coins, and
then he put a key attached to the box in the lock, and fastened it.
Bertha watched, she hardly knew why, with deep interest her uncle's
proceedings, and saw him rise from the table with the box in his hand
and go out.

She climbed on the seat to bring her face on a level with the little
window, and distinctly saw her uncle, with a lantern in one hand, which
he set down by his side, and in the other a spade, with which he dug a
hole in the soft, sandy mould by the strip of garden, where Mrs.
Skinner cultivated some straggling cabbages, which went to _stalk_ with
but few leaves, in the poor soil of the little enclosure.

Presently he put something from his pocket into the hole, and then
covering it with the soft soil, he returned to the house.

What did it all mean? Poor Bet felt something was wrong, and yet how
could she help it?

"I wish there was any one I could tell," she thought; "but there is
nobody. Little Miss Joy wouldn't care to hear, and nobody else would
listen to me if I did tell them. And I suppose Uncle Joe has a right
to bury his things if he likes; but it's very odd."

Then she crept back to her bed, and was soon asleep.

Bet went off to school the next morning with a lighter heart than
usual, for she had