Harvey, in turn, handed the candle over to Henry Burns.
“Here,” he said. “You found it. It’s your right to have the first look at whatever is there.”
Henry Burns, as near the point of actual excitement as he ever got, took the candle, eagerly, and looked again. The boxlike object was clearly a drawer of some sort, for, on closer scrutiny, there was revealed a tiny knob by which it might be drawn out.
“The mice are here, anyway,” said Henry Burns, as he reached in and set the candle down, preparatory to extending his arm at full length to draw out the box. “I see a hole in one corner where they can get in and out.”
Then, as he seized the knob and pulled the little drawer open, there darted out a small object that ran across his hand and disappeared in the darkness beyond the lantern lights.
Henry Burns laughed, the next moment, for he had dodged back, bumping his head and letting go of the knob.
“Run for your life, Jack,” he cried. “Here comes the witch.”
Then, before Harvey’s astonished eyes, Henry Burns drew forth into the light of the cabin lantern a little drawer; and, within it, a nest fashioned of odds and ends of paper and soft stuff; and, within the nest, a family of tiny mice, lying as snug as the proverbial bug in a rug.
The drawer was about a foot in length, six inches deep, and perhaps four inches in height. It contained no apparent treasure—only a litter of paper that mice had torn and gnawed into pieces. There was no gold nor jewels therein.
“Hm!” exclaimed Harvey, with an expression of chagrin overshadowing his face, “Don’t look as though there was anything there to make us rich—or to have warranted Carleton in breaking into our cabin, eh?”