s gold
should take to itself wings and fly away.

Ruin and decay had invaded the sleeping-room of the miser, as it had
every other part of his house. There was many a hole in the plastering,
and many a hole in the floor; but there was one particular hole in the
wall, about a foot above the floor, in a corner behind the bed. This
particular hole was selected as the receptacle for the gold. He had cut
away the laths, so that he could thrust his arm down into the aperture,
and deposit the bag on the sill of the house.

He had begged a piece of board of Mr. Mogmore to cover this hole, and
had fastened it over the plastering with four screws. While he was thus
engaged, Mat Mogmore, the carpenter's son, had come for the
screw-driver uncle Nathan had borrowed at the shop. Mrs. Fairfield, not
knowing what her husband was doing, sent him into the chamber for it.

"Stoppin' up the cracks to keep the cold out," whined the miser. "I
cal'late I got the rheumatiz out of this hole."

Mat wanted the screw-driver, but he helped fasten up the board before
he took it, and wondered what the old man had cut away the laths for.
The board was put up, and the money was safe; but the miser hardly
dared to go out of sight of the house.

CHAPTER II.

FIRE.

Levi entered the house. Uncle Nathan was not at home, but he was
probably somewhere in the vicinity. Aunt Susan was in the kitchen
baking her weekly batch of brown bread, the staple article of food in
the family, because it was cheaper than white bread.

"Aunt, I want to go up in the garret and get that little saw-mill I
made four or five years ago," said Levi.

"Well, I s'pose you can," replied she, filling up the old brick oven
with pine wood, which cracked and snapped furiously in the fierce
flames.

"It's up there now--isn't it?"

"I s'pose 'tis, if you put it there; I hain't teched it."

"Will you give me a little piece of candle, too, if you please?"

"You can take that piece in the candlestick on the mantel-tree piece,
if it's long enough."

"That will do just as well as if it were a foot long," replied Levi,
taking the piece of candle, and rolling it up in a bit of newspaper.

He went up into the attic, found the saw-mill just as he had left it,
though it was covered with half an inch of dust and cobwebs. When he
came down, he heard uncle Nathan's voice in the kitchen. He was
growling because his wife used so much wood to heat the oven, and Levi
concluded no