lf heard
above the babble. "We found it in the attic. But I don't see what
difference it makes where we got it," she added impatiently, getting down
on her knees once more and shaking the trunk as if it were to blame.
"Won't you please get busy and open it, boys? Aren't you a bit curious to
see what's inside?"

"Is there a key?" asked Ferd, and Billie looked up at him in despair.

"Of course not, silly," she said. "Don't you suppose we'd have had it
open ages ago if there had been a key? You'll have to break it open, or
pick the lock, or something."

"Say, she's insulting us! Thinks we're thugs," murmured Ferd, as he,
with the other boys, got down on the floor and began to examine the
trunk eagerly.

"Yes, where do you suppose we got our experience in picking locks?" added
Chet, looking aggrieved.

"Goodness, I don't care whether you pick the lock or what you do as long
as you get it open," cried Billie, half wild with impatience now that the
fateful moment had arrived. "You can use dynamite for all I care."

"Maybe that's what's in it," suggested Teddy, and the girls screamed.

"Teddy! Of all the wet blankets!"

"Well, you never can tell," said Teddy, adding wickedly, as Ferd started
to set the trunk on end: "Be careful there, Ferd; she may explode, as the
aeroplane did."

"Somebody give me something to throw at him," cried Laura indignantly.
"Anyway," she added triumphantly, "we know there isn't dynamite in it or
we'd have been blown to bits long ago. We dragged it down stairs."

"Yes, and we didn't do it very gently either," added Violet.

"It has a pretty strong lock," said Chet, getting to his feet and
rumpling up his hair thoughtfully. "I'll have to get a hammer and a wedge
of some sort."

"Oh, there are all sorts of tools down in the tool-house," Billie cried
eagerly, and Chet looked at her as though she had said she had discovered
a gold mine in the back yard.

"Tools!" he repeated, his eyes shining. "Are they good ones?"

"I don't know anything about tools," said Billie. "But it looked as if
there were hundreds of them--"

Chet waited to hear no more. Like a streak of lightning he was out of the
room and racing down the stairs.

"Tools!" he was saying gloatingly to himself, "hundreds of them!"

Upstairs Billie turned and looked at Teddy in dismay.

"Now what have I done?" she cried. "If he once gets among those tools we
won't see him for hours. Teddy," and she looked appealing enough even