then. Why, Harlan, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

She pointed to a small metal box in the midst of the ashes.

“Poem on Spring, probably, put into the corner-stone by the builder of the mattress.” 33

33

“Don’t be foolish,” she said, with assumed severity. “Get me a pail of water.”

With two sticks they lifted it into the water and waited, impatiently enough, until they were sure it was cool. Then Dorothy, asserting her right of discovery, opened it with trembling fingers.

“Why-ee!” she gasped.

Upon a bed of wet cotton lay a large brooch, made wholly of clustered diamonds, and a coral necklace, somewhat injured by the fire.

“Whose is it?” demanded Dorothy, when she recovered the faculty of speech.

“I should say,” returned Harlan, after due deliberation, “that it belonged to you.”

“After this,” she said, slowly, her eyes wide with wonder, “we’ll take everything apart before we burn it.”

Harlan was turning the brooch over in his hand and roughly estimating its value at two thousand dollars. “Here’s something on the back,” he said. “‘R. from E., March 12, 1865.’”

“Rebecca from Ebeneezer,” cried Dorothy. “Oh, Harlan, it’s ours! Don’t you remember the letter said: ‘my house and all its 34 contents to my beloved nephew, James Harlan Carr’?”

34

“I remember,” said Harlan. But his conscience was uneasy, none the less.

35

III

The First Caller

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