Hadley cleared up the untidy kitchen as best he could, and then lit a tallow dip at the single candle on the table, and obeyed his uncle’s behest by mounting the stairs to the loft over the room. He went to bed at once, for he was tired enough, but he could not sleep for thinking of his uncle’s strange manner and words. There was some mysterious connection between Colonel Knowles and the Morrises; but Uncle Ephraim did not intend to admit it. Hadley fell into a doze at last, but only for a short time. The squeak of a door below aroused him, and after listening a moment and fancying all sort of noises, as one will in the night when the house is still, he crept out of bed, slipped on his outer clothes again, and tiptoed to the head of the stairs to see if his uncle had himself gone to bed. There was a faint light below, and the boy was confident that the candle must be burning, for Uncle Ephraim would never leave a fire on the hearth at this time of the year. Carefully going down several steps in perfect silence, he managed to get a view of the whole kitchen, including the fireplace, and what was his astonishment to see Ephraim Morris standing upon a chair before an old brick oven built high in the chimney, and which Hadley never remembered seeing opened before. It was open now, however, and the old gentleman had his head and shoulders thrust inside, as though reaching for something concealed at the extreme back of the oven. CHAPTER IX A MIDNIGHT BURYING To play the rôle of eavesdropper, or “Peeping Tom,” was not exactly as Hadley Morris would have wished. He hated a sneak; but his curiosity regarding his uncle’s manœuvres was for the time too strong for his ideas of what was really honorable, and instead of retreating up the stairs to the loft again, he remained where he was and watched the old gentleman with wide-open eyes. Like most substantially built houses of that day, the Morris homestead had a great stone and brick fireplace built into the end wall. To the right of the fireplace was one of those ovens in which the pioneer housewives did all their baking. The oven was like a safe built into the side of the chimney, and had a smooth clay floor. Uncle Ephraim had always kept the oven door fastened with an old-fashioned brass padlock. The padlock now lay on the floor, and as Hadley continued to peer into the wide kitchen from around the corner of the door-frame, he saw Master Morris draw back from the mouth of the oven, holding a bag in each hand. The bags were not large, but by the way his uncle carried them the boy knew they were heavy, and when the old man stepped down from the chair and laid them on the table, the listener heard a faint chink as though of metal. “It’s gold!” whispered the boy to himself, and his eyes opened even more widely at the thought.