I don't think you'll get far enough to get
scorched any. You're silly children, any way," finished Cricket, with a
very elder-sisterly air.

Nevertheless, Helen did not feel secure until Cricket had jumped into
the hole and pulled up the feather, triumphantly.

"Now I'm going to dig myself," with a deep-laid purpose in her mind,
"and you may dig, too. You start another hole, right here. I'll dig this
big one out more, and I'll be an incubus"--meaning nobody knows
what--"and live in it, and you be little crabs trying to get out of my
way in these holes of yours."

The children, quite reassured now as to the safety of their pet
amusement, dug away merrily, while Billy, like an amiable Turk, sat
cross-legged near by.

The shifting stretches of sand changed their shape year by year with the
wind and rain, and Cricket had no definite idea of the exact locality of
the spot where mamma and auntie had buried their money-bags, thirty
years before. She enlarged the hole the children had begun, till it was
quite an excavation, carrying on her game of "incubus" with the children
all the time. At last she concluded to sit down and rest. She planted
herself in the bottom of the hole, with her curly crop not visible above
the top of it. She pulled up her sleeve, plunging her hand idly in the
dry, cool sand, till her arm was buried far above the elbow. Then her
hand struck a resisting object.

"Oh, _oh_!" she shrieked, immediately, not daring to move her hand lest
she should lose the object, which _might_ prove what she was searching
for. It was too large to bring up through the weight of sand.

"Come here, Zaidee, quick," she cried. "Dig me out. Dig out my arm,
quick."

Helen looked fearfully into the hole, then set up a shriek in her turn.

"Mr. Satam's got Cricket's hand, and he's holding her down. Pull, pull,
Zaidee," and the child began tugging at Cricket's nearest shoulder,
which she could reach without committing herself to the dreadful
possibilities of that hole. Zaidee instantly jumped in, however, and,
screaming, herself, added her small strength to pull up Cricket's arm,
while Billy, startled by this sudden hubbub, ran distractedly from side
to side, trying to find something to pull, likewise adding his peculiar
"Hi! Hi!" his expression of great excitement. Cricket laughed so at the
general uproar that she could not explain.

"Oh, children," she managed to cry at last. "Stop pulling the sockets
out of my arms--I m