w limits of the cabin, shaking
his fists over his head in the most frantic manner. The old woman waited
patiently for him to sit down again, and then she took her pipe from her
mouth long enough to say:

"Kelsey is out of a job jest now."

"That's no news. He's always that way. He won't work when he gets the
chance. He would rather beg his living or steal it."

"I know that he's mighty shiftless an' triflin', but he's a tol'able
overseer, Kelsey is, when he onct makes up his mine to do something,"
said the woman. "Now that Hanson has went off the Grays aint got nobody
to boss the hands."

"The idea!" cried Tom, who began to "see daylight" once more. "Does
Captain Beardsley labor under the delusion that Marcy Gray will hire
that man Kelsey, who is next door to a fool, and allow him----"

"Yes, Kelsey is tol'able triflin', an' that there is a fact,"
interrupted the woman. "But he aint nobody's fule. He's as sly an ole
fox as you can meet in a day's travel."

"Marcy Gray will not have him on the place, I tell you," said Tom. "And
even if he should be dunce enough to hire him, how could Kelsey find out
whether or not there was any money in the house? If the captain has
anything against Kelsey, and wants him to disappear some dark night as
Hanson did, he is taking the right course to bring it about. That's what
will happen to Kelsey if he goes to work on that plantation, and I want
you both to remember my words."

"And let me tell you another thing," added Mark. "No one man is going to
find the hiding-place of that money if there is any about the house.
When the building is down and the foundations are torn up, then it will
be found, and not before."

"That there is a fact," observed the woman.

"Where do you think it is concealed, any way?" inquired Tom. "I had an
idea that it might be buried in the garden."

"I am willing to bet my horse against your jack-knife that it isn't,"
replied Mark. "It is so close to the house that the family can keep an
eye on all the approaches to it, and it is where fire can't touch it."

"Then it must be buried in the cellar," exclaimed Tom. "I declare! I
believe you have hit the exact spot. I should like to be left alone in
that place for about an hour with a shovel to work with. I would be rich
when I came out."

"You jest keep away from that there suller," said the old woman sternly.
"Don't go nigh the house, nary one of you."

The two boys elevated their eye-brows and looke