Judson was making ready to go to town when the visitor arrived. He had not missed a court day since early boyhood, and no farm work was ever sufficiently important to keep him at home on such occasion. When the girl explained her errand, he readily agreed to deliver any message she might wish to send her father, and to see to the bringing out of the needed carpet chain, while Mrs. Judson said, persuasively: "'Phrony, I do wish you'd stay an' show me about cuttin' out a sack pattern. I'm as lost as if I was in the Roosian sea when it comes to cuttin' out things." "An' it won't be puttin' you to too much trouble to see about the chain?" the girl asked of the man. "It's just as easy as rollin' off a log," answered the complaisant host, who was of a most obliging disposition, and ever ready to attend to anybody's and everybody's business save his own. "Now, Steve Judson, don't you forgit that carpet chain!" his wife called out admonishingly, in a shrill treble, as her husband rode off. "Men air sech forgitful critters 'bout rememberin'," she added complainingly to her visitor. It was close upon noon when Sophronia started home, and she once more shortened the distance, choosing the ravine, and the way through the woods. "I do wonder what he was buryin' so carefully up there?" she asked herself as she stopped in the ravine and looked up its shadowy depths. The spot at which she had seen her neighbor digging was only a short distance away; in fact, she could almost see the exact location from where she now stood. She hesitated and gazed longingly up the ravine. A daughter of Eve, the impulse of investigation was strong upon her. If she only dared to venture farther up the shaded recesses to the spot where Steve had been digging! And why should she not dare? She would be quite free from interruption, for her neighbor was safe in town by now, and this remote place was rarely frequented. She dallied with the temptation, casting yearning glances toward the charmed locality, and finally, almost before she realized the fact, she was standing beneath the very tree at whose foot the mysterious interment had taken place but a few hours ago. With a glance of caution about her, such as he, too, had given, she suddenly stooped down and with some little difficulty moved the large flat rock that had been placed to mark the spot. Near by she found a sharp-pointed stick, the same that he had used, and with it began to scrape away the loose earth which hid the object of her search. It proved to be a glass fruit jar, a plain jar having a metal top screwed down on a ring of rubber, and within was a roll of something wrapped in a scrap of newspaper. What in the world could it be?