Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/328

324 was Philip's cautious reply. "We may find more spoons."

With a few blows of the axe the rickety wooden bedstead made kindling for the fire and then on the pyre were cast carpets, chairs, the bureau, the huge trunk, the small rawhide trunk with the fantastic "begalia," which smelled vilely as it burned.

"Put on that stool next," commanded Elizabeth.

"First I must rip it up. There is no telling what is inside the old carpet sewed around it," insisted Betsy.

The girl sat down on the back porch steps and cut the twine and wires with which the carpet was roughly sewn.

"Look! It's funny old books," she cried. "Three of them! What a ridiculous old woman!" And then Betsy began to laugh and cry at the same time, and her mother and brother hurried to her. "It's the old deed books, the old deed books, lost during the war! Look! Look! Papers dated way back in the thirties and forties—even earlier! Oh! Oh! Oh! How happy I am!"