itchie?"

"He's a preacher."

The revivalist was stunned, and he looked at Mitch and kind of started
to get away from him. Then Mitch says: "My pa debated baptism with
another preacher last winter and beat him. I believe in sprinklin'. I've
been sprinkled, and I will let it stay that way until I'm convinced."

Then the revivalist says: "Take your chance, my little friend," and went
away. The meeting ended and we went home. To-morrow was Saturday, and we
were going to dig for treasure.

CHAPTER IV

Mitch and I had dug under pretty near every dead limb in Montgomery's
woods and hadn't found a trace of any treasure. We began in April when
the winds sang as they did in March. There were blackbirds around then
and that bird that sings "spring day." Mitch's father knew the names of
all the birds; but outside of crows, robins, jay-birds and things like
that we didn't know 'em--neither Mitch nor I. We didn't care, for what's
the use of knowing names of things? You can't pronounce 'em anyway, and
I've noticed people get queer studying such things, like Homer Jones who
gathered weeds and flowers and pinned long names on 'em.

When we began to dig, the sap was flowing out of the maple trees. And
once George Montgomery saw us digging. He had come over to empty his
buckets of sap to make some maple sugar. And he said, "What are you boys
doing?" and laughed and said--"Don't bother my buckets. If you want a
taste of sap take it, but don't get the buckets askew so they will
spill."

Mitch called back to him, "What do you say, George, if we find a
tea-kettle of money buried here sommers, buried by old Nancy Allen?" And
George said, "Take it along--but you'll dig the whole world up before
you do."

You see Mitch was foolin' because we didn't think Nancy Allen had left
her money there, if she had any. But Mitch didn't want to say that we
was followin' the direction of Tom Sawyer for treasure. We kept the book
hid under a log, and every now and then would take it out and read it to
see if we missed any of the points. If we had told George Montgomery
what we was doin', he would have laughed at us and told everybody, and
had the whole town laughin' at us. Because we knew nobody but us had any
faith in such things. But Mitch had faith and so had I. We agreed that
there was treasure to be found, and if we worked we believed we could
get it.

[Illustration: George Montgomery]

It was a good thing that Nancy Allen died that