"Queer, but I can never trust 'Bony.' He seems as honest and reliable as possible for a time, and then, suddenly, he will do something to disappoint me. I don't like his demeanor toward the 'boss.' Ever since Mr. Wingate returned, late this summer, and took to coming here every day, 'Bony' has come too. Have you noticed?" "I know he comes. I hadn't connected the two comings, however. I guess he's all right. There's a splendid side to that poor lad's nature, if you but knew it. Some day, I hope before very long now, he and I are to surprise the world." "Why, Hal, you're as gay as a blackbird. What's the surprise, eh? Too precious to disclose even to me?" "At present, yes. In a little while, a few days--Heigho!" and the lad looked significantly toward his crutches, leaning against the desk where he wrote. But the superintendent did not observe the glance. His mind was full of misgiving. Within a day or two he had had occasion to suspect that the half-wit had some uncanny scheme on hand. The lad's dislike of the old mill owner appeared to grow with the passage of time. The dull brain never forgot an injury, and it always seemed to Fayette that Mr. Wingate had wronged him. From the old days of his "bound out" life on the farm, when whippings and punishments were of almost daily occurrence, to the present, there had been no diminution in the mill boy's resentment. Now there was this later injury, or injustice, as he believed, about the money found in the cellar of "Charity House." The facts were these: the glittering coins had, when estimated, been of about one thousand dollars' value. To Fayette this seemed an enormous sum; to Mr. Wingate, a trifle. In the chest with the treasure had been also a time-yellowed letter, or memorandum, signed by the wife of Jacob Ingraham, and decreeing that the property thus hidden had been placed by her own hands in the wall of the cellar of "Spite House" for the "benefit of my nearest of kin." The document, in itself, was as curious as its hiding-place, and proved that the ancient dame had been a keen observer of men's failings, if not their virtues. "For I have seen, in this, my lifetime, that gold profits a man nothing. It is ever a bone of contention, and he who has it is poorer than he who has it not. I hope this chest will do him good who finds it; and if it is never found, then the earth will be so much the richer by this small portion of the wealth it has lost. In any case, to prevent evil, and, if possible, to secure a blessing, I have said one prayer over each coin herein disposed, and so, in duty to my conscience, I lock the box and throw the key down the old well of this Bareacre knoll." The letter had further added that nobody, not even Jacob Ingraham, had known of this bestowal of the chest, because had anybody, "most of all, he," so known, it would have been excavated and its contents scattered.