HAY-LOFT DREAMS
All the pretty pink color which had hitherto tinged the lady's cheek had vanished, and she visibly trembled, so that Katharine darted forward to her support. But Aunt Eunice raised her hand protestingly, and tottered forward to the nearest chair. With dry, white lips, she asked in a voice so low it could barely be heard:
"Montgomery Sturtevant, where—where did you find that?"
Her appearance alarmed both the children, who fancied she, also, was about to faint as Moses had done, yet she did not fall nor did her gaze waver; and impelled by its sternness to make reply, Monty finally stammered:
"H-h-h-hay-m-m-ow."
"Hay-mow! Impossible!" returned Miss Maitland, becoming a bit more natural in appearance, while Kate indignantly turned upon her playmate, demanding and denying:
"How dare you? He didn't. 'Twas I—under a tree in your own big forest. I dug it up and fetched it—he fetched—there wasn't a hay-mow anywhere near it. Oh, Aunt Eunice, it's the Magic Treasure. It holds the key to all the world—to all the good things in the world, anyway. And you're the wonderful Wise Woman will open it and let us use the gold and diamonds and precious stones to make all the poor people rich and glad. 'Tis yours, I know, and quick, quick!"
With a bound she seized the box from Monty's hands and brought it to the disturbed lady, who, when the girl would have placed it on her lap, recoiled as from some venomous thing.
"No, no! Don't bring it to me. I wouldn't touch it. It has wrought evil already, and so great—"
Then she abruptly paused and steadfastly regarded the quaint old casket which, as Katharine had discovered, seemed to have neither lock nor fastening, and was in itself a marvellous piece of mechanism. As she gazed her thought was busy as painful, but out of the chaos one idea at last grew clear: The Brass Bound Box must be safely hidden and none must know that it had ever been found. To hide it she would have to touch it, no matter how unwillingly. But the secret of its existence must be kept, although that secret was already in the possession of these two others.