ind.

"You can get breakfast while I'm gone then," Ellen said, catching up her
coat, "and if I don't come back pretty soon, you go ahead and eat yours.
I'd a thousand times rather ferret out what those Howes are tryin' to bury
than eat. I'd be willin' to starve to do it."

CHAPTER VII

THE UNRAVELING OF THE MYSTERY

LEFT to herself Lucy stood for an instant watching her aunt's resolute
figure make its way under the fringe of lilacs that bordered the driveway.
Then she turned her attention to preparing breakfast, and the Howes and
their mysterious doings were forgotten.

In the meantime Ellen walked on, skirting the shelter of the hedge until
she came into the lee of a clump of elder bushes growing along the margin
of the brook at the juncture of the Howe and Webster land. Here she
secreted herself and waited.

The brook was quite deep at this point and now, swollen by the snows that
had recently melted on the hillsides, purled its path down to the valley
in a series of cascades that rippled, foamed, and tinkled merrily.

As she stood concealed beside it, its laughter so outrivaled every other
sound that she had difficulty in discerning the Howes' approaching tread,
and it was not until the distinct crackle of underbrush reached her ear
that she became aware they were approaching. She peered through the
bushes.

Yes, there they were, all three of them; and there, firm in their grasp,
was the mysterious bag.

It was not large, but apparently it was heavy, and they handled it with
extreme care.

"Let's put it down," puffed Mary, who was flushed and heated, "an' look
for a good deep place. Ain't you tired, 'Liza?"

"I ain't so tired as hot," Eliza answered. "Warn't it just providential
Martin took it into his head to go to the village this mornin'? I can't
but think of it."

"It was the luckiest thing I ever knew," assented Mary. "I don't know what
we'd 'a' done with this thing round the house another day. I'd 'a' gone
clean out of my mind."

"I still can't understand why we couldn't 'a' left it buried," Eliza
fretted.

"I explained why to you last night," Jane answered, speaking for the first
time. "There warn't a spot on the place that Martin might not go to
diggin' or plowin' up sometime. He might even 'a' dug round the roots of
the linden for somethin'. Ain't he always fertilizin' an' irrigatin'? I
didn't dare leave the bag there. If he'd 'a' gone stickin' a pick or a
shovel into it sudden----