"So you've been lookin' for it, have ye? Well, now you've got it, but ye might ha' been killed in the job. What for no? With Mister Fred gone to town an' him tellin' ye most explicit ye should no touch nor meddle at all. Was aught like this found in either of them mushroom ones?" "I--don't--know," answered Fayette, slowly, still stooping and tying his bundle. "If there was--that man's--got it. It was _mine_. _I_ begun the digging. I--" "An' he finished, eh? Well, you take up your pack an' put it here in my dresser. Then go wash your face. Such a sight! Hold, did ye any more harm there below?" "Harm! harm! to dig such a treasure as this out of my mine? Well, if I used only a little bit of powder and got so much, what a lot I might have found if I'd used more. I'll bet the whole ground is full." "Oh, ye silly! Put that stuff down. It's makin' ye lose what little sense you've got. An', me neighbor, look here. See them beautiful biscuits all spoiled the day, the day!" This reminded the lad that he was hungry. He had been hard at work all day in the underground passage, the third and last of those he had set out to make beneath "Charity House." The first two had been completed, the walls shored, the rich beds for mushroom-raising made upon the dark damp floors. Already these beds were dotted with the white growths, that in a marvellous short time would be full-grown mushrooms and finding a place upon many an epicure's table. That very hour, even, Frederic Kaye was in the city negotiating for their regular sale at profitable prices; and wondering not a little, it may be, at the strange fact that "Spite House," instead of being the barren, unproductive spot at first supposed, would prove instead a veritable mine of support to the whole household. Of that other "mining," with its anticipated results in gold of which Fayette had sometimes babbled, Mr. Kaye took no account. Old Jacob Ingraham who built the house had been a hard, close-fisted man, if all accounts were true, and not at all likely to deposit his money in the ground, when there were investments which would help to increase it. But of old Jacob's wife, history said little, and Frederic never thought. Fayette placed the apron in the cupboard, as he had been bidden, and when he would have added the broken box also, Cleena prevented. "Oh, ye dirty boy! That--that mouldy, muddy, nasty thing! No, no! No, no!" and she tossed it unceremoniously into the box of kindling-wood. In the roomy "Dutch" oven in the wall she had baked many of her picnic biscuits, and she regarded the ruin Fayette had wrought among her sandwiches with an air absurdly sad.