"You hain't been telling her?" said Tilly, anxiously. "I don't think she knows she lost the spoons. I saw that she came down this road that night, and I've been hunting for them. I ain't going to have a mite of trouble come on her. She's been different to me from what anybody ever was before, not looking down on me as if I was the dirt under her feet. And her father, too, he's come and come to see mother when he knew there wa'n't a cent to pay him with. I have bore a sight"—Tilly's strained voice threatened to break—"but I can bear more. I won't have trouble come to her if I can help it. You hain't been telling her all about it?"
Ruby came up to them before there was time for an answer.
"Hunting for something, Tilly?" she asked, easily. "I'm afraid you won't find it in all this mud."
"No—-no, I hain't found them," stammered Tilly, uncertain whether Ruby knew about the spoons. "But"—and her face lighted with sudden eagerness—"I've found something queer; you see if it isn't queer." Tilly turned back, running before them up to the door of the miser's little house. "No, it isn't the tracks," she added, as Ruby hurriedly explained about the dog. "It's the door-stone; it looks as if it had been moved lately. If you are looking along on the ground, as I was, you notice it."
"Well, what if it has?" asked Ruby, wondering, and a little impatient.
"Somebody might have hidden something there," said Tilly, whose longing to find the spoons was evidently desperate.
"Some of the miser's treasures or his clothes-line booty," cried Ruby, gayly, for miser Jensen was suspected of petty thieving, and Butternut Corner breathed more freely when his summer sojourn was over. "Girls, let's pry the stone up!"
"I tried to, alone, but I couldn't," said Tilly, eagerly bringing a long stake from the tumble-down fence.
The three girls tried for a long time with their united strength. The stone was flat and not very heavy, but was unwieldy, while Tramp, let out of the house, barked and capered with excitement in spite of his injured leg.