that indicated he had no great faith
in her success.

"I'm going to bait up two hooks with a whole lot of worms, and I'm not
going to put 'em into the pool till after it gets dark," replied Bess
Thornton. "And I'm going to let 'em stay there all night. He's such a
sly old thing you can't get near the bank without he knows it. Then when
it gets morning, and he's hungry, perhaps he'll see all those worms and
just go and catch himself."

"Yes, and get away again long before you get back," said Tim Reardon.
"He'll just take and tangle that line all up around the rocks and sticks
at the bottom, and break it."

"I'm going to try, anyway," she insisted. They turned in at the path
leading to the girl's home presently, and she went in with the pickerel.

"I'll dig some bait for you while you're gone," called Tim.

"I can do it," she said.

"Oh, you're all dressed up," said Tim, who had noted her unusual
appearance, clad as she was in her new bright sailor-suit.

"Going to change it," she said, "Had to put it on to go to Benton in."

She went into the house, and Tim Reardon, seizing a spade that he found
leaning against the shed, made his way to a corner of the house, where
an old water-spout came down, from the gutter that caught the rain on
the roof. He was turning up the soil there when the girl reappeared.

"Oh, that isn't the place to dig," she said. "I never dig for worms
there."

"Well, here's the place to find 'em," asserted Tim. "I'm getting some.
You always find angleworms where the ground's moist. They like it,
because the rain comes down off the roof here. There you are, grab that
fat fellow."

The girl made a grab at a bit of the soft earth, where a worm was
wriggling back into its hole.

"Ugh! he got away," she said, opening her hand and letting the dirt drop
through her fingers. The next moment she uttered a little cry of
surprise.

"I've got something, though," she exclaimed. "Look, Tim, it's
money--it's a coin. Where do you suppose it came from? Perhaps it's good
yet. If I can spend it, I'll go halves."

The boy took the piece of money from her fingers. It was dull and
tarnished; a little larger in size than a ten cent piece, but it was not
silver.

Tim Reardon looked at it intently and rubbed its sides on his trousers
leg.

"Say, Bess," he said earnestly, "do you know what I think--I guess it's
gold. Yes, I do. 'Tisn't American money, though. It's got a queer head
on it, see, a man with so