bby old trunk, and
beside this trunk a man was kneeling. As Billie Bradley spoke, the man,
who was her father, rose to his feet and thoughtfully brushed the dust
from his clothes. Then he stood looking down at the hundreds and
hundreds of postage stamps and old coins that filled the queer old
trunk.

"Is it really true, Dad?" Billie continued, shaking her father's arm
impatiently while the other young folks looked eagerly up at him.

Mr. Bradley nodded slowly.

"Yes, you really have made a find this time, Billie," he said. "Of
course I'm not an expert, but I'm sure the coins in that old trunk are
worth three thousand dollars, and the postage stamps ought to bring at
least two thousand more----"

"At least two thousand more!" broke in Chet Bradley, excitedly. "Does
that mean that Billie may get more for the postage stamps?"

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Mr. Bradley, nodding his head. "However,"
he added, smiling round at the girls and boys, "you'd better not count
on anything over five thousand."

"But five thousand dollars!" interrupted Laura Jordon, in an awed voice.
"Just think of it, Billie! And because your Aunt Beatrice left you this
house and everything in it, every last cent of that five thousand
belongs to you."

"Yes," said Teddy Jordon, turning to Billie with a chuckle. "I suppose
you won't look at any of us now you've got this money. How does it feel,
Billie?"

"I--I don't know, yet," stammered Billie, still staring at the wonderful
trunk. "You'll just have to give me time to get used to it, that's all."

As those readers who have read the first book of this series, entitled
"Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance," will probably have gathered, the
girls, Billie Bradley, Laura Jordon and Violet Farrington, and their boy
relatives and chums, Chet Bradley, Ferd Stowing and Teddy Jordon, were
still at the old homestead at Cherry Corners where so many weird and
mysterious experiences had befallen them.

For the benefit of those who are meeting the girls and boys for the
first time, what had happened up to the time of this story will be
sketched over briefly.

The young folks had grown up in North Bend, a town of perhaps twenty
thousand people, and about forty miles by rail from New York City. The
girls had seen the great metropolis several times, though their visits
had been all too short to satisfy their eager curiosity.

Billie Bradley was called the most popular girl in North Bend, and,
indeed, af