errily. "I wish I could ask gran' about it,"
she said.

A small box attracted her eye and she seized that. She got a surprise
then. She had thought that perhaps it might contain the coin. But it
contained that and more. There, indeed, was the golden coin; but,
strangely enough, it was not as she and Tim Reardon had found it, but
affixed to a small golden chain.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "Gran' was right, then. It did belong to us, after
all. My, it's pretty, too. Gran' ought to let me wear it."

She tried to hang it about her neck, but the chain was too short. She
remedied that, however, by piecing it out with two bits of ribbon which
she found in the drawer. These she knotted in a bow at the back of her
neck, and danced over to the mirror, to note the effect of the chain
with its ornament. It was a rare piece of finery in her eyes, and she
gazed upon it long and wistfully.

"I'm going to wear it awhile," she exclaimed. "It won't hurt it any.
Gran' said I wore it once, when I was little. It's mine, I guess,
anyway."

She continued her rummaging through the drawer, but it yielded nothing
more to her fancy. She shut the drawer and locked it, and went to look
at herself once more in the piece of mirror. The sun came out from
behind the passing clouds, and, as it streamed in at one of the windows,
it shone on the chain and the coin and on the girl's face.

"I just can't take it off yet," she said; and, closing the blinds,
tripped down the stairs. But, as she looked out the door, she espied
Granny Thornton coming in at the gate. She thought of the chain and its
coin; and, realizing it was too late to regain the attic and replace it,
slipped quietly out at the shed door and ran down through the fields to
the brook, before Granny Thornton had espied her.

As she came to the edge of the brook, a small boy, that had been lying
face down on the turf, with an arm deep in the water, rose up and
greeted her.

"Why, hello, Tim," she said, surprised; "what are you doing?"

"Trying to tickle that big trout," replied Tim Reardon. "I've been here
half an hour, without moving, but I can't find him. There's where he
lies, though; I've seen him often. But he won't come near; he's too
smart. I'm going to try the pickerel. See here, look what I've got."

He put a hand into his trousers pocket, and drew forth an object wrapped
in a piece of newspaper. It proved to be a new spoon hook, bright and
shiny, with gleaming red and silver, and