ghtfully.

"Would you claim relationship?"

_"Never!"_ declared Ernest, emphatically. "It was he, you say, who
prejudiced my grandfather against my poor father?"

"Yes."

"In order to secure the estate himself?"

"Undoubtedly that was his object."

"Nothing could be meaner. I would rather live poor all my life than
get property by such means."

"If you have no more questions to ask, Ernest, I will try to sleep. I
feel drowsy."

"Do so, Uncle Peter."

The old man closed his eyes, and soon all was silent. Presently Ernest
himself lay down on a small bed near by. When he awoke, hours
afterward, he lit a candle and went to Peter's bedside.

The old man lay still--very still. With quick suspicion Ernest placed
his hand on his cheek.

It was stone cold.

"He is dead!" cried Ernest, and a feeling of desolation came over him.

"I am all alone now," he murmured.

But he was not wholly alone. There was a face glued against the
window-pane a face that he did not see. It was the tramp he had met
during the day at the village store.

CHAPTER III.

A SUCCESSFUL ROBBERY.

The tramp stood with his face glued to the pane, looking in at the
boy. He could not quite understand what had taken place, but gathered
that the old man was dead.

"So much the better!" he said. "It will make my task easier."

He had hoped to find both asleep, and decided to wait near the house
till the boy went to bed. He had made many inquiries at the store of
Joe Marks, and the answers to his questions led him to believe that
old Peter had a large amount of money concealed in his cabin.

Now, Tom Burns was a penniless tramp, who had wandered from Chicago on
a predatory trip, ready to take any property he could lay his hands
on. The chance that presented itself here was unusually tempting to a
man of his character.

Earlier in the evening he had reached the cabin, but thought it best
to defer his plans until later, for Ernest was awake and stirring
about the room.

The tramp withdrew to some distance from the cabin and lay down under
a tree, where he was soon fast asleep. Curiously, it was the very oak
tree under which Peter's little hoard was concealed, but this, of
course, he did not know. Had he been aware that directly beneath him
was a box containing a hundred dollars in gold he would have been
electrified and full of joy.

Tom Burns in his long and varied career had many times slept in the
open air, and he had no diffic