“Not exactly, but I think you’ve been stung by some old stranded side show that was taking the tie route back home.  Circassian beaut!  Ho-ho, likewise ha-ha! and some more.”

“Ter say nothin’ o’ a Egyptian fortune teller from Popodunk, Ioway, an’ a wild man from ther Quaker village.  Oh! give me ther smellin’ salts.  I’m goin’ ter hev ther histrikes,” laughed Bud.

“Haf you not got a echukated vooly pig und a feller vot ’eats ’em alife’?” asked Carl.

“That’s right, Dutchy.  It’s a bum show what ain’t got them,” laughed Bud.

The boys were laughing until the house rang with it, and Stella poked her pretty head out of the door to ask to be told the joke.  Bud complied, with many humorous embellishments.

“Don’t pay any attention to them, Ben,” said Stella sympathetically, “I’ll take in the show from start to finish.”

“Could friendship go any farther than that?” asked Kit pathetically.

“Oh, you fellows give me a pain,” said Ben, rising and stalking off to bed.

He was soon followed by the others, Ted and Kit remaining behind to gather up the money and slip rubber bands around each of the packages of currency.

“We ought to have a safe in the house, Ted,” said Kit, looking over the pile of money.  “We often have large sums of money in the house, and some time we might get robbed.”

“There’s not much danger of that, Kit,” answered Ted.  “There are not many fellows who would have the nerve to come into this house.  Too many guns, and too many fellows who are not afraid to shoot them.  I’m not afraid.”

“What was that?”

Kit was staring at the rear window.

“What?”

“I just looked up and thought I saw a face at the window.”

“You’re getting imaginative.”

Just then the clock struck twelve.

“No, I don’t think so.  I heard a slight cracking noise and looked up.  Something white appeared at the window for an instant.  It looked like the face of a child.”

“Nonsense.  A child couldn’t look through that window.  It’s seven feet from the ground.”

“Well, I suppose I was mistaken.  Let’s hide that money and go to bed.”

“Where shall we put it?”

Kit looked around the room, then smiled.

“Why, in the cubby-hole, of course.  There’s a safe for you.  We haven’t used it for so long that I’d almost forgotten it.”

“The very thing.  Nobody’d find it there in a blue moon.”

They crossed over to a corner of the room and threw back the corner of a rug.  Where the baseboard was mortised at the corner there appeared to have been a patch put in.  Ted placed his hand against this, near the top, and it tipped back.  It was hung on a pivot, and, as its top went in and the bottom came out, there was revealed a boxlike receptacle about two feet long and six inches deep.

“This is a bully place,” said Ted, placing the packages of money within it.  “It is known to only five of us, and I’ll bet that most of us have forgotten its very existence.”