“The night Annie Laurie and I fell asleep on the sofa.”
“Tell me more, ’Zalie.”
“Yes, yes, I will. I’ll tell you everything. Oh, Annie Laurie, was the tin arm buried with him?”
“No—no, I’m sure it wasn’t. It was hanging on a nail in his bedroom the day after he was buried, but the aunts couldn’t bear to see it there and they carried it to the attic.”
“Then the money couldn’t have been in it after all.”
“Oh, it might still be there. Let’s go see.”
Up to the attic they went, trembling with eagerness. There, sure enough, from a beam hung the tin arm. Annie Laurie could not quite bring herself to touch it. It seemed almost like a part of her father. But Azalea took it down, convinced that she was right. She looked into it; carried it to one of the windows and looked again. She ran her fingers into the hand of it. She turned her disappointed face toward her friends. There was nothing there.
“All the same,” she said with earnestness, “it was there.”
“But then some one has taken it out.”
“That’s it,” said Carin. “Some one has taken it out.”