eaned against the wall of the tunnel, pulling
Ham back with him.

In a few minutes they were surprised to hear loud exclamations and the
moving of the old iron wheelbarrows. Ahead they could see the light of
the opening, so Old Ben started again toward the entrance.

"Guess that memorial service must be all over, from the racket they're
makin' with them tarnal carts," he said.

When they reached Willis, they found him carefully going through the
pockets of the musty old coat hanging upon the wall. The cloth had fairly
rotted in the moisture. Tad was holding the treasures as Willis removed
them from the pockets. To Tad's surprise, there was inside the coat an
old vest. They were no doubt the clothes Mr. Thornton had worn the day
of the accident. In one vest pocket was Bill's gold watch, in another a
musty pocketbook and a badly worn note-book that had mildewed in the
moisture. There were three letters in the outside coat pocket. Willis
took one, moist and rotten as it was, from the envelope and noticed they
were from his mother, and were probably the last ones she had written.
Willis's hand shook violently and two great tears glistened in his eyes.
In the other outside pocket was a strange tin tube, perhaps a foot in
length, with a removable lid at either end. The tube was rusted red and
the ends sealed tight with rust. Willis handed the tube to Tad, a
question on his lips.

"Thank God," Tad was saying to himself, "thank God, he didn't do it.
I've often thought I'd kill him if he had."

"If who had what?" questioned Willis.

"Don't ask me, lad, not now--I'll tell you some time, perhaps. Come,
let's go. This air is very bad, and I'm just a little sick." He linked
his arm through Willis's, and together they walked out into the cold
morning air. Ben and Ham followed. When they were outside, Tad swung the
door shut and locked it. Then, with a note of triumph in his voice, he
said:

"There, Williams can have the place for all I care," and he held the
queer tin tube in his hand before them.

"Open it," urged Willis. Tad turned to him.

"My boy, there has never been a day in the past half-dozen years that I
have not wondered what became of that tin tube. Many times, after hours
of reasoning, I have decided that your uncle stole that tube from your
father's belongings. I have done the man an injustice. From my firm
belief that he had taken the tube came my great dislike for him. You have
never seen the contents of tha