Augusta Huiell Seaman

“ You doan ketch ole Beulah gwine near no graveyard dis time o’ night!” she declared.
“But, Beulah, he isn’t in a tomb!” I assured her. “There’s the entrance to a secret passageway under that old stone seat. It leads to the house here. You must come and help us get him out. He’s badly hurt!”
“Ah doan take no stock in no passage-ways!” she repeated. “Dat kind ob ting in a graveyard's sho to be a tomb!' But at last I convinced her, and very reluctantly she joined us and, when Tomkins had carried Cookson up the steps, lent her rugged strength to lifting him toward the house. ”

“ Then he told us his side of the story—not so very different an account from Beulah's except that he was closer in touch with Uncle Benham and knew more of how he had felt. He said that Uncle Ben ham had almost died of grief when he found the teakwood chest missing from the secretary in his brother's room, because then he believed that his brother had taken it with deliberately dishonest intention and had gone away with it, though why Ashbel should suddenly do such a thing was something Uncle Benham could not fathom. ”

“ Connie declared. “We haven’t found out half of what we should know. Get Tomkins to come in here and we’ll explain the whole, thing to him and then he can tell us what we’d better do about old Cookson.” So I went and hunted up Tomkins, who was lingering about outside Mr. Cookson's door, waiting for the doctor and Miss Carstair to be through fixing him up. ”