“For what I am going to tell you. Last Wednesday evening I was crossing the four-acre lot—a part of Mr. Winter’s farm—when I saw him coming across the field with a box in his hand. It was rather dark, so he could not see me very well, for you know he is short-sighted.
“I had a curiosity to find out what he was going to do, so I followed him. Oh, I forgot to say that he had a spade in his hand. Well, when he got to the big oak tree about the center of the place he halted. There was a smaller tree near by, and I hid behind it so I could see what he was doing.”
“What did he do?” asked Ben, who was by this time intensely interested.
“He began to dig, and kept on till he had dug a hole about two feet deep. Then he took the box and put it down in the hole and covered it up with dirt. After finishing he got a little brushwood and laid it down careless like over the spot so as to hide the dirt, and then went away, without knowing that any one had seen him.”
“What do you think was in the box, Albert?” asked Ben, in excitement.
“Money,” answered Albert, sententiously. “It may have been gold or silver or bills. I didn’t see the contents of the box and so of course I can’t tell.”
“It seems to me he was very foolish to put his money there.”
“So I think, but he was scared by the failure of the savings bank and was afraid to trust them any more.”
“The money would be safer in any savings bank than in a hole where anybody could dig it up.”
“That’s the way I feel about it. I wonder if that is the only hiding place he has for his gold.”