rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never
prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his
brother. I read his letters to Abe--Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to
me--and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."

"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake
of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now,
Mr. Buckham."

"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever
mentioning it before you gals."

"'Little pitchers have big ears,'" quoted Agnes.

At that Dot flared up. "I'm not a little pitcher! And I haven't got big
ears!" The smallest Corner House girl knew now that her ill-timed
remarks during her first call with Tess on Mrs. Eland had, somehow,
made trouble. "How'd I know that Lem--Lemon Aden's brother was Mrs.
Eland's father? He might have been her uncle."

They had to laugh at Dot's vehement defense; but Mr. Bob Buckham went
on: "My fault, I tell ye--my fault. But I believe it's going to be all
cleared up."

"How?" asked Agnes, quickly.

"And will my Mrs. Eland feel better in her mind?" Tess asked gravely.

"That's what she will," declared the farmer, vigorously. "She told me
about the old papers and the book left by her Uncle Lemuel over there to
the Quoharis poorfarm where he died. I got a letter from her to the
townfarm keeper, and I drove over and got 'em the other day.

"Like ter not got 'em at all--old Lem being dead nigh fifteen years now.
Wal! Marm and me's been looking over that little book. Lem mebbe was a
leetle crazy--'specially 'bout money matters, and toward the end of his
life. You'd think, to read what he'd writ down, that he died possessed
of a lot of property instead of being town's poor. That was his
foolishness.

"But 'way back, when he was a much younger man, and his brother Abe got
scart over a trick he'd played about a horse trade and went West (the
man who was tricked threatened to do him bodily harm), what old Lem
wrote in that old diary was easy enough understood.

"There's some letters from Abe, too. Put two and two together,"
concluded Mr. Buckham, "and it's easy to see where my pap's five hundred
dollars went to. It was left by Abe all right in Lem's hands; but it
stuck to them hands!"

"Oh!" cried Agnes, "what a wicked man that Lemuel Aden must have been."

"Nateral born miser. Hated ter give up a penny he didn't hafter give up.
But them two