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“Begun it! You talk as if ‘t was a quilt!” Isabel began to laugh.

“Now don’t!” said her aunt, in great distress. “Don’t ye! I s’pose ‘t was because we was such little girls an’ all when ‘Liza started it, but it makes me as nervous as a witch, an’ al’ays did. You see, ‘Liza was a great hand for deaths an’ buryin’s; an’ ‘as for funerals, she’d ruther go to ’em than eat. I’d say that if she was here this minute, for more ‘n once I said it to her face. Well, everybody ‘t died, she saved suthin’ they wore or handled the last thing, an’ laid it away in this chist; an’ last time I see it opened, ’twas full, an’ she kind o’ smacked her lips, an’ said she should have to begin another. But the very next week she was took away.”

“Aunt Luceba,” said Isabel suddenly, “was aunt Eliza hard to live with? Did you and aunt Mary Ellen have to toe the mark?”

“Don’t you say one word,” answered her aunt hastily. “That’s all past an’ gone. There ain’t no way of settlin’ old scores but buryin’ of ’em. She was older ‘n we were, an’ on’y a step-sister, arter all. We must think o’ that. Well, I must come to the end o’ my story, an’ then we’ll open the chist. Next day arter we laid her away, it come into my head, ‘Now we can burn up them things.’ It may ha’ been wicked, but there ‘t was, an’ the thought kep’ arter me, till all I could think of was the chist; an’ byme-by I says to Mary Ellen, one mornin’, ‘Le’s open it to-day an’ make a burnfire!’ An’ Mary Ellen she turned as white as a sheet, an’ dropped her spoon into her sasser, an’ she says: ‘Not yet! Luceba, don’t you ask me to touch it yet.’ An’ I found out, though she never’d say another word, that it unset her more’n it did me. One day, I come on her up attic stan’in’ over it with the key in her hand, an’ she turned round as if I’d ketched her stealin’, an’ slipped off downstairs. An’ this arternoon, she went into Tilly Ellison’s with her work, an’ it come to me all of a sudden how I’d git Tim Yatter to harness an’ load the chist onto the pung, an’ I’d bring it over here, an’ we’d look it over together; an’ then, if there’s nothin’ in it but what I think, I’d leave it behind, an’ maybe you or Sadie’d burn it. John Cole happened to ride by, and he helped me in with it. I ain’t a-goin’ to have Mary Ellen worried. She’s different from me. She went to school, same’s you have, an’ she’s different somehow. She’s been meddled with all her life, an’ I’ll be whipped if she sha’n’t make a new start. Should you jest as lieves ask Sadie or John?”

“Why, yes,” said Isabel wonderingly; “or do it myself. I don’t see why you care.”

Aunt Luceba wiped her beaded face with a large handkerchief.

“I dunno either,” she owned, in an exhausted voice. “I guess it’s al’ays little things you can’t stand. Big ones you can butt ag’inst. There! I feel better, now I’ve told ye. Here’s the key. Should you jest as soon open it?”

Isabel drew the chest forward with a vigorous pull of her sturdy arm. She knelt before it and inserted the key. Aunt Luceba rose and leaned over her shoulder, gazing with the fascination of horror. At the moment the lid was lifted, a curious odor filled the room.

“My soul!” exclaimed Aunt Luceba. “O my soul!” She seemed incapable of saying more; and Isabel, awed in spite of herself, asked, in a whisper:–

“What’s that smell? I know, but I can’t think.”

“You take out that parcel,” said aunt Luceba, beginning to fan herself with her handkerchief. “That little one down there’t the end. It’s that. My soul! how things come back! Talk about spirits! There’s no need of ’em! Things are full bad enough!”