"

"I'm frightened to death!" wailed Eliza.

"So'm I!" Mary echoed. "Oh, Jane!"

"No matter. Pull yourself together," ordered Jane sharply. "You two take
a hold of the bag an' bring it along, while I climb the wall."

Ellen, stooping behind the elderberry bushes, held her breath. She saw
Jane clamber over the barrier and help Mary and Eliza to mount it and
lower the sack into her hands; then, just when the three invaders were all
ready to drop their mysterious gray burden into the stream, she stepped
noiselessly into the open and said loudly:

"What you doin' in my brook?"

A cry rose from the two more timorous Howes, and even Jane paled a
little.

"What are you sinkin' in my brook?" repeated Ellen.

No answer came. Angered by their silence, the woman stepped nearer.

"What you got in that bag?" she demanded sternly.

Still there was no reply.

"You ain't got nothin' good in it, I'll be bound," went on the tormentor.
"If you had, you wouldn't be so mighty anxious to get rid of it. Come now,
long's you're intendin' to heave it into the water on my side of the wall,
s'pose you let me have a peep inside it."

Striding forward, she seized a corner of the canvas roughly in her hand.

There was a scream from the three Howes.

"Don't touch it!"

"Keep away!"

"You'd better leave it be, Miss Webster," Jane said in a warning voice.
"It's gunpowder."

"Gunpowder!" repeated Ellen.

"Yes."

"An' what, may I ask, are you doin' with a bag of gunpowder in my brook?
Plannin' to blow up my cows, I reckon."

"No! No, indeed we're not!" protested Mary.

"We wouldn't hurt your cows for anything, Miss Webster," put in Eliza.

"Humph! You wouldn't? Still you don't hesitate to dam my brook up with
enough gunpowder to blow all my cattle higher'n a kite."

"We were only tryin' to----" began Mary; but Jane swept her aside.

"Hush, Mary," she said. "You an' 'Liza keep still an' let me do the
talkin'."

Drawing herself to her full height she faced Ellen's evil smile.

"The day before yesterday, when we were cleanin' the attic, we found a
little door under the eaves that we'd never come across before," she began
desperately. "We discovered it when we were movin' out a big chest that's
always stood there. We were sweepin' behind all the trunks an' things, an'
long's we were, we decided to sweep behind that. 'Twas then we spied the
door. Of course we were curious to know where it went to, an' so we pried
it open, an'