d.

"What does it mean?" I cried.

Burritt did not answer. He was looking out toward the river. Suddenly he
turned his eyes upon me and said in his former suppressed tone:

"He filled the box with stone and earth, and these were what we carried
out and put into the wagon. But it was full when it came, and very
heavy. Now, what was it filled with, and what has become of the stuff?"

It was the question then; it is the question now.

Burritt hints at crime, and has gone so far as to spend all the
afternoon searching the river banks. But he has discovered nothing, nor
can he explain what it was he looked for or expected to find. Nor are
my own thoughts and feelings any clearer. I remember that the times are
unsettled, that the spirit of revolution is in the air, and try to be
charitable enough to suppose that it was treasure the young husband
brought with him, and that all the perturbation and distress which I
imagine myself to have witnessed in his behavior and that of his wife
were owing to the purpose that they had formed of burying, in this spot,
the silver and plate which they were perhaps unwilling to risk to the
chances of war. But when I try to stifle my graver fears with this
surmise, I recall the fearful nature of the shriek which startled me
from my sleep, and repeat, tremblingly, to myself:

"Some one was in mortal agony at the moment I heard that cry. Was it the
young wife, or was it--"

CHAPTER III.

A FEARFUL DISCOVERY.

APRIL 3, 1791.

[Illustration: I]

It is sixteen years since I wrote the preceding chapters of this history
of mystery and crime. When the pen dropped from my hand--why did it
drop? Was it because of some noise I heard?

I imagine so now, and tremble. I did not anticipate ever adding a line
to the words I had written. The impulse which had led me to put upon
paper my doubts concerning the two Urquharts soon passed, and as nothing
ever occurred to recall this couple to my mind, I gradually allowed
their name and memory to vanish from my thoughts, only remembering them
when chance led me into the oak parlor. Then, indeed, I recollected
their manner and my fears, and then I also felt repeated, though every
time with fainter and fainter power, the old thrill of undefined terror
which stopped my record of that day with the half-finished question as
to who had uttered the shriek that had startled me the night before.
To-day I again take up my pen. Why? Because to-day