e.

Something about the hillside, some association of ideas, perhaps the
view of a gnarled honey-suckle-bush where he had gathered flowers in his
childhood, set his memory working, and there flashed upon him the
incident of the cave, and what he had left concealed there when he went
into the army. He looked for the cave's entrance, but saw none. The
matter began to interest him. Why there was no entrance visible was
easily explained. Clay had overrun with the spring rains from the
cultivated field above, building gradually upward from the bottom of the
little hill until the aperture had been entirely hidden. This deposit of
clay, a foot perhaps in depth, reached nearly to the summit of the
slight declivity. Appleman began speculating as to where the cave might
be, and his curiosity so grew upon him that he resolved to learn. He cut
a stout blue-beach rod and sharpened one of it, and estimating as
closely as he could where the little cave had been, thrust in his
testing-pole. Scarcely half a dozen ventures were required to attain his
object. He found the cave, then went to the barn and secured a spade and
came back to do a little digging. He had begun to feel an interest in
the fate of those two whisky barrels. It was not a difficult work to
effect an entrance to the cave, and within an hour from the time he
began digging Appleman was inside and examining things by the aid of a
lantern which he had brought. He was astonished. The cave had evidently
never been entered by any one save himself; all was dry and clean, and
the two barrels stood apparently just as he had left them, over thirty
years ago. He decided that they must be empty, that their contents must
have long since evaporated; but when he tried to tilt one of them over
upon its side he found it very heavy. He made further test that day,
boring a hole into the top of one of the barrels, with the result that
there came forth a fragrance compared with which, to a judge of good
liquor, all the perfumes of Araby the Blest would be of no importance.
He measured the depth of the remaining contents, and found that each
barrel was more than two-thirds full. Then he hitched a horse to a buggy
and drove to town--drove to the same distillery where he had bought
those barrels in the latter 'fifties. The distiller of that time had
passed away and his son reigned in his stead--the youth who had
decorated the barrels with the red chalk-marks. To him, now a keen,
middle-aged bus