sh, for greater convenience in
handling. I trust you will not spend it all in one store, and that you
will, out of your abundance, be generous to the poor. It might be well to
use a part of it in making a visit to New York. When you find this, I
shall be out in the cemetery all by myself, and very comfortable.

"Yours, Ebeneezer Judson."

"I knowed it," she said to herself, excitedly. "Ebeneezer was a hard man,
but he always kep' his word. Dear me! What makes me so trembly!"

She removed all the bedclothes and pounded the pillows and mattress in
vain, then turned her attention to the furniture. It was almost one
o'clock when Mrs. Dodd finally retired, worn in body and jaded in spirit,
but still far from discouraged.

"Ebeneezer must have mistook the room," she said to herself, "but how
could he unless his mind was failin'? I've had this now, goin' on ten
year."

In the night she dreamed of finding money in the bureau, and got up to see
if by chance she had not received mysterious guidance from an unknown
source. There was money in the bureau, sure enough, but it was only two
worn copper cents wrapped in many thicknesses of old newspaper, and she
went unsuspiciously back to bed.

"He's mistook the room," she breathed, drowsily, as she sank into troubled
slumber, "an' to-morrer I'll have it changed. It's just as well I've
scared them others off, if so be I have."

XI

Mrs. Dodd's Third Husband

Insidiously, a single idea took possession of the entire household. Mrs.
Smithers kept a spade near at hand and systematically dug, as opportunity
offered. Dorothy became accustomed to an odorous lantern which stood near
the back door in the daytime and bobbed about among the shrubbery at
night.

There was definite method in the madness of Mrs. Smithers, however, for
she had once seen the departed Mr. Judson going out to the orchard with a
tin box under his arm and her own spade but partially concealed under his
long overcoat. When he came back, he was smiling, which was so unusual
that she forgot all about the box, and did not observe whether or not he
had brought it back with him. Long afterward, however, the incident
assumed greater significance.

"If I'd 'ave 'ad the sense to 'ave gone out there the next day," she
muttered, "and 'ave seen where 'e 'ad dug, I might be a rich woman now,
that's wot I might. 'E was a clever one, 'e was, and 'e's 'id it. The old
ski