Madge examined the loose earth but as she had no implement with which to dig, was unable to tell whether or not anything had been buried. Cara displayed slight interest and moved away. Madge completely forgot her until she came back dragging a spade.
“Here, if you must dig around in the dirt, use this.”
Madge seized upon the tool, demanding to know where it had been discovered.
Cara indicated a large lilac bush only a few feet away. “I found it beneath the branches.”
“This must be the shovel your ghost was using last night! See, there’s a little dirt still on it. If it had been lying there long, it would be rusty. Cara, I’ll wager a cent—a good Indian cent—that you frightened someone away from here last evening.”
“Then it was mutual.”
“Perhaps the person who hid this shovel intends to come back again,” Madge went on reflectively. “Now what I can’t understand is why anyone would come to a boarded-up mansion at midnight to dig up the garden.”
Cara, who was not particularly imaginative, could not suggest a possible explanation. She watched with hopeful interest as her friend began to turn up the loose earth. After Madge had dug for fifteen minutes she decided it was not worth the effort.
“Shucks! I’m convinced there’s nothing hidden here. And if anyone should find us digging up the yard it might be hard to explain.”
She carefully repacked the soil in the hole, and then to Cara’s wonderment, returned the spade to the place where it had been found under the lilac.