that lantern come
from?"

Captain Obed looked where she was pointing. He stepped forward and
picked up the overturned lantern.

"That's Darius Holt's lantern, I do believe," he declared. "The one
Winnie S. was makin' such a fuss about last night. How in the nation did
it get up here?"

Thankful laughed. "I brought it up," she said. "I come on a little
explorin' cruise when Emily dropped asleep on that sittin'-room lounge,
but I hadn't much more'n got in here when the pesky thing went out. You
ought to have seen me hurryin' along that hall to get down before
you woke up, Emily. No, come to think of it, you couldn't have seen
me--'twas too dark to see anything. . . . Well," she added, quickly,
in order to head off troublesome questioning, "we've looked around here
pretty well. What else is there to see?"

They visited the garret and the cellar; both were spacious and not too
clean.

"If I ever come here to live," declared Thankful, with decision,
"there'll be some dustin' and sweepin' done, I know that."

Emily looked at her in surprise.

"Come here to live!" she repeated. "Why, Auntie, are you thinking of
coming here to live?"

Her cousin's answer was not very satisfactory. "I've been thinkin' a
good many things lately," she said. "Some of 'em was even more crazy
than that sounds."

The inside of the house having been thus thoroughly inspected they
explored the yard and the outbuildings. The barn was a large one, with
stalls for two horses and a cow and a carriage-room with the remnants of
an old-fashioned carryall in it.

"This is about the way it used to be in Cap'n Abner's day," said Captain
Obed. "That carryall belonged to your uncle, the cap'n, Mrs. Barnes.
The boys have had it out for two or three Fourth of July Antiques and
Horribles' parades; 'twon't last for many more by the looks of it."

"And what," asked Thankful, "is that? It looks like a pigsty."

They were standing at the rear of the house, which was built upon a
slope. Under the washshed, which adjoined the kitchen, was a rickety
door. Beside that door was a boarded enclosure which extended both into
the yard and beneath the washshed.

Captain Bangs laughed. "You've guessed it, first crack," he said. "It
is a pigpen. Some of Laban's doin's, that is. He used to keep a pig and
'twas too much trouble to travel way out back of the barn to feed it, so
Labe rigged up this contraption. That door leads into the potato cellar.
Labe fenced off ha