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“‘Cap’n Tolland acquainted me with his affairs; he hadn’t no sort o’ confidence in nobody but me an’ his wife, after he was tricked into signin’ that Portland note, an’ lost money. An’ she didn’t know nothin’ about business; but what he didn’t take to sea to be sunk with him he’s hid somewhere in this house. I expect Mis’ Tolland may have told you where she kept things?’ said uncle.

“I see he was dependin’ a good deal on my answer,” said Mrs. Todd, “but I had to disappoint him; no, she had never said nothin’ to me.

” ‘Well, then, we’ve got to make a search,’ says he, with considerable relish; but he was all tired and worked up, and we set down to the table, an’ he had somethin’, an’ I took my desired cup o’ tea, and then I begun to feel more interested.

“‘Where you goin’ to look first?’ says I, but he give me a short look an’ made no answer, and begun to mix me a very small portion out of the jug, in another glass. I took it to please him; he said I looked tired, speakin’ real fatherly, and I did feel better for it, and we set talkin’ a few minutes, an’ then he started for the cellar, carrying an old ship’s lantern he fetched out o’ the stairway an’ lit.

“‘What are you lookin’ for, some kind of a chist?’ I inquired, and he said yes. All of a sudden it come to me to ask who was the heirs; Eliza Tolland, Cap’n John’s own sister, had never demeaned herself to come near the funeral, and uncle Lorenzo faced right about and begun to laugh, sort o’ pleased. I thought queer of it; ‘t wa’n’t what he’d taken, which would be nothin’ to an old weathered sailor like him.

“‘Who’s the heir?’ says I the second time.

“‘Why, it’s you, Almiry,’ says he; and I was so took aback I set right down on the turn o’ the cellar stairs.

“‘Yes, ’tis,’ said uncle Lorenzo.’I’m glad of it too. Some thought she didn’t have no sense but foreign sense, an’ a poor stock o’ that, but she said you was friendly to her, an’ one day after she got news of Tolland’s death, an’ I had fetched up his will that left everything to her, she said she was goin’ to make a writin’, so ‘s you could have things after she was gone, an’ she give five hundred to me for bein’ executor. Square Pease fixed up the paper, an’ she signed it; it’s all accordin’ to law.’ There, I begun to cry,” said Mrs. Todd; “I couldn’t help it. I wished I had her back again to do somethin’ for, an’ to make her know I felt sisterly to her more ‘n I’d ever showed, an’ it come over me ’twas all too late, an’ I cried the more, till uncle showed impatience, an’ I got up an’ stumbled along down cellar with my apern to my eyes the greater part of the time.

“‘I’m goin’ to have a clean search,’ says he; ‘you hold the light.’ An’ I held it, and he rummaged in the arches an’ under the stairs, an’ over in some old closet where he reached out bottles an’ stone jugs an’ canted some kags an’ one or two casks, an’ chuckled well when he heard there was somethin’ inside, — but there wa’n’t nothin’ to find but things usual in a cellar, an’ then the old lantern was givin’ out an’ we come away.

“‘He spoke to me of a chist, Cap’n Tolland did,’ says uncle in a whisper.’He said a good sound chist was as safe a bank as there was, an’ I beat him out of such nonsense, ‘count o’ fire an’ other risks.’ ‘There’s no chist in the rooms above,’ says I’; ‘no, uncle, there ain’t no sea-chist, for I’ve been here long enough to see what there was to be seen.’ Yet he wouldn’t feel contented till he’d mounted up into the toploft; ’twas one o’ them single, hip-roofed houses that don’t give proper accommodation for a real garret, like Cap’n Littlepage’s down here at the Landin’. There was broken furniture and rubbish, an’ he let down a terrible sight o’ dust into the front entry, but sure enough there wasn’t no chist. I had it all to sweep up next day.