On top of this wall, ruthlessly trampling back and forth on the leaves, was a small boy dressed in the fashion of a member of the navy. His blue pantaloons flapped very widely at the ankles, and were belted about him by a leather belt on which was the word "Vireo," in gilt letters; his brimless cap was tipped perilously on that part of his head where the warm affections used to be located in the days of phrenology. On this cap also appeared the word "Vireo," in gilt. This figure, outlined as it was against the bright blue of the sky, had the effect of not being more than about sixteen inches long. And in truth Leander Ffolliott was very small for his age, which was ten years and five months. He did not feel small, however; his mind might suitably have inhabited a giant's frame, so far as his estimation of himself and the Ffolliott family generally was concerned. But the rest of the family did not always agree with him in this estimation, and at such times of disagreement the boy was given to screaming and kicking until the air round about this summer residence resounded, and seemed actually to crackle and glimmer in sympathy with the mood of Leander. Just now he had stopped in his trampling of the ivy leaves. He was standing with his legs wide apart, and was bending forward somewhat, stirring with a stick something on the top of the wall in front of him. His atom of a face was screwed up, his lips sticking out. "Sis!" he suddenly shrieked; "I say, sis!" The girl on the piazza stopped reading, and looked at the boy. "What's the matter?" she called out. "You just come here; you come here this minute! Stop readin' that nasty book, 'n' come along!" "Carolyn, you'd better go," said a voice from the inner side of an open window; "if you don't he may be so tried with you that he'll fall off the wall. I've told him not to get on that wall, anyway." The girl rose and turned her book down open upon her chair. Then she sauntered slowly along over the lawn, so slowly that her brother Leander stamped his foot and called to her to hurry, for he couldn't wait. "You'd better hurry, Carolyn," said the gentle voice at the window; "I'm so afraid he may fall." So the girl hastened, and in a moment was leaning against the wall and asking, without much interest: "What is it, Lee? You do shriek so!" Leander was now standing upright. He had put his foot, encased in yellow leather, hard down on the something he had been poking at. His freckled face was red, his eyes shining with excitement. "By George!" he exclaimed; "you can't guess in a million years what I've found! No, not in ten million! I ain't picked it up yet. I wanted you to see me pick it up. Oh, thunderation! won't I just do what I darn please with the money? You bet! Fifty dollars! Cousin Rod owes me fifty dollars! I don't s'pose he'll be so mean as to say that ad. of his has run out 'n' he don't owe me anything. Do you think he'll be so mean as that, Caro? Say!"