his feet."

14

There was one large wicker chair on the piazza, and in the chair sat a girl. It was a spacious piazza, the roof of which was supported by gnarled tree-trunks, the bark and the knots carefully preserved so as to look "rustic." The deep eaves drooped in a rustic manner also, and there were trumpet-vines and wistaria, and various other creeping things of the vegetable world, wandering about in a careful carelessness, like the hair of a woman when it is dressed most effectively.

The lawn swept down rather steeply and stopped suddenly against a thick stone wall that was covered with ivy.

On top of this wall, ruthlessly trampling back and forth on the leaves, was a small boy dressed in the fashion of a member of the navy. His blue pantaloons flapped very widely at the ankles, and were belted about him by a leather belt on which was the word "Vireo," in gilt letters; his brimless cap was tipped perilously on that part of his head where the warm affections used to be located in the days of phrenology. On this cap also appeared the word "Vireo," in gilt. This figure, outlined as it was against the bright blue of the sky, had the effect of not being more than about sixteen inches long. And in truth Leander Ffolliott was very small for his age, which was ten years and five months. He did not feel small, however; his mind might suitably have inhabited a giant's frame, so far as his estimation of himself and the Ffolliott family generally was concerned. But the rest of the family did not always agree with him in this estimation, and at such times of disagreement the boy was given to screaming and kicking until the air round about this summer residence resounded, and seemed actually to crackle and glimmer in sympathy with the mood of Leander.

Just now he had stopped in his trampling of the ivy leaves. He was standing with his legs wide apart, and was bending forward somewhat, stirring with a stick something on the top of the wall in front of him. His atom of a face was screwed up, his lips sticking out,

"Sis!" he suddenly shrieked; "I say, sis!"

The girl on the piazza stopped reading, and looked at the boy.

"What's the matter?" she called out.

"You just come here; you come here this minute! Stop readin' that nasty book, 'n' come along!"

"Carolyn, you'd better go," said a voice from the inner side of an open window; "if you don't he may be so tried with you that he'll fall off the wall. I've told him not to get on that wall, anyway."

The girl rose and turned her book down open upon her chair. Then she sauntered slowly along over the lawn, so slowly that her brother Leander stamped his foot and called to her to hurry, for he couldn't wait.

"You'd better hurry, Carolyn," said the gentle voice at the window; "I'm so afraid he may fall."

So the girl hastened, and in a moment was leaning against the wall and asking, without much interest:

"What is it, Lee? You do shriek so!"

Leander was now standing upright. He had put his foot, encased in yellow leather, hard down on the something he had been poking at. His freckled face was red, his eyes shining with excitement.

"By George!" he exclaimed; "you can't guess in a million years what I've found! No, not in ten million! I ain't picked it up yet. I wanted you to see me pick it up. Oh, thunderation! won't I just do what I darn please with the money? You bet! Fifty dollars! Cousin Rod owes me fifty dollars! I don't s'pose he'll be so mean as to say that ad. of his has run out 'n' he don't owe me anything. Do you think he'll be so mean as that, Caro? Say!"

At this thought Leander's face actually grew pale beneath tan and freckles.

The girl was not very much impressed as yet by her brother's excitement. She was used to seeing him excited.

"You know Rod wouldn't do anything mean," she replied, calmly. "But what are you talking about? Of course it can't be—"

"Yes, 'tis, too. And it's fifty dollars. Now you needn't go 'n' tell Rod he no need to pay it, 'cause 'twas one of the family. I won't stand it if you do! I—"

"Stop your gabble!" interrupted the girl, imperatively. "Lift up your foot."

She took hold of the boy's arm as she spoke. A certain spark had come into her eye.

The foot was withdrawn. In a cleft between the stones, where the ivy leaves had hidden it, lay a ring. It was turned so that the stone could but just be seen.

She extended her hand, but it was promptly twitched away by her brother.

"None er that!" he cried. "I ain't goin' to let you pick it up; then you'll be wantin' to share in the fifty dollars. You can't do that,—not by a long streak. Here she goes!"

He stooped and then held up a ring between his finger and thumb. The sun struck it, and made the engraved carbuncle shine dully red.

"That's the very critter!" exclaimed Leander, triumphantly.

"Let me take it," said the girl.

She spoke shortly, and in a way that made the boy turn and look at her curiously. But he obeyed instantly. He laid the ring in the palm of her hand, thrust his own hands into his pockets, and stood gazing down at his sister.

Carolyn Ffolliott looked at the trinket with narrowing eyes. Her lips were a trifle compressed.

"There ain't any mistake, is there?" the boy asked, at last, speaking anxiously. "That's the ring Rod lost, ain't it? Anyway, it's one exactly like it,—that red stone with something cut into it."

"There isn't the least chance of any mistake," was the answer. "Of course it's Rod's."

Carolyn gave back the ring.

"And I sh'll have the reward?"

"Of course."

The girl appeared to have lost all interest in the matter. She turned to go back to the piazza.

Leander made an extremely tight, hard, dingy fist of one hand, with the ring enclosed, and then he leaped down from the wall, landing so near to his sister that she staggered away from him.

"I wish you would behave respectably!" she cried.

"Pooh!" said Leander. He ranged up by her side and walked across the lawn with her towards the house.

He had now put the ring on his thumb and was holding it up in front of him, gazing at it. He was greatly surprised that his sister took no more notice of it. But you never knew what to expect of a girl. Anyway, she shouldn't have any of that money.

"I'll bet I know how the ring got there," he remarked, presently.

"How?"

"Why, you gaby you, the crow, of course. But I don't know how he got it. Flew into Rod's room sometime, I s'pose. If he thinks such an almighty lot of it, Rod better look out. I guess fifty dollars'd get a lunkin' lot of cannon crackers, don't you think, sis?"

"Yes," absently.

"But I better have some pin-wheels, 'n' Roman candles, don't you think?"

"Yes."

Leander turned, and peered up at his sister's face.

"You mad 'cause you didn't find it?" he asked.

"No."

"All right. I guess I'll get you 'n' marmer some kind of a present. I'll make marmer tell me what she'd like for 'bout fifty cents. Hi! marmer! I'll let you have three guesses 'bout what I've found—"

Here Leander slammed in through the wide screen door which opened from the piazza into the hall.

Leander's sister resumed her seat. She had taken up her book, and now