“Gunpowder!” repeated Ellen.
“Yes.”
“An’ what, may I ask, are you doin’ with a bag of gunpowder in my brook? Plannin’ to blow up my cows, I reckon.”
“No! No, indeed we’re not!” protested Mary.
“We wouldn’t hurt your cows for anything, Miss Webster,” put in Eliza.
“Humph! You wouldn’t? Still you don’t hesitate to dam my brook up with enough gunpowder to blow all my cattle higher’n a kite.”
“We were only tryin’ to——” began Mary; but Jane swept her aside.
“Hush, Mary,” she said. “You an’ ’Liza keep still an’ let me do the talkin’.”
Drawing herself to her full height she faced Ellen’s evil smile.
“The day before yesterday, when we were 104 cleanin’ the attic, we found a little door under the eaves that we’d never come across before,” she began desperately. “We discovered it when we were movin’ out a big chest that’s always stood there. We were sweepin’ behind all the trunks an’ things, an’ long’s we were, we decided to sweep behind that. ’Twas then we spied the door. Of course we were curious to know where it went to, an’ so we pried it open, an’ inside we found this bag together with an old rusty rifle. It must ’a’ been there years, judgin’ from the dust an’ cobwebs collected on it. We were pretty scared of the gun,” declared Jane, smiling reminiscently, “but we were scared a good sight worse when after draggin’ the bag out we saw ’twas marked Gunpowder.”