Finding the Lost Treasure
and Dapple, moving away from the gate, put an end to the farewells.

No one saw, hidden away among the maple saplings, scrub pine, and underbrush which covered the field beside the house, the bulky figure of a man. Neither did they hear softly muttered words of anger and revenge.

After they had left Yarmouth behind and were jogging along the road back over the same route they had covered on the train the day before, Desiré turned sidewise in the seat to inspect once more the interior of their “store.” At the back was their trunk, and next to it their box; and on either side, reaching to the very top of the wagon, shelves tightly packed with jars, cans, rolls of material. The small tent which they had bought on their way out of town was laid along the floor at one side.

“I must get acquainted with all the stock,” she observed; “so I’ll be able quickly to find what people want.”

“The first time we stop, you can look things over,” replied Jack. “You’d lose your balance and be rolling out if you tried to do it while we’re moving.”

The younger ones laughed hilariously. They were in high spirits now, and even Jack felt a thrill of excitement under his sober, staid manner.

Up and down the long hills they drove, past numberless lakes and ponds, in and out of woods sweet with the odor of sun-warmed pine, and across rivers whose red mud flats made a vivid splash of color on the landscape.

“So many, many little bodies of water,” murmured Desiré.

“The ground is so uneven,” explained Jack, “that the water settles and forms lakes.”

“Why are the river banks so wide, and so very muddy?” asked Priscilla, leaning on the back of the seat.

“Out there,” answered Jack, waving his arm toward the West, “is the Bay of Fundy, a big, windy, rough body of water, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. This bay has huge tides, rising in some places to a height of fifty or seventy feet. When the tide is high, the water rushes into all the rivers on this side of the country and fills them to overflowing; then all these banks are covered up. The tide comes twice a day; so you see the flats have no time to dry out.”

Through Brazil, Lake Annes, and Hectanooga they had passed without stopping, and then the children began to get hungry. Jack drew up to the side of the road in the open country, and stopped 
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