His mother shook her head as she gazed at the bits lying on her palm.

“Not worth all these moneys,” she murmured as she counted forty cents in the small coins in her other hand.  It was a mystery.

Moya put the bits of brass back into the gourd and went on with her dusting.

Mrs. Schuler telephoned to Mr. Emerson early in the morning, telling him of the damage to the house and asking him to come and see what had happened go that the bricklayers might be set to work as soon as possible.

“I’m afraid to let Moya light the kitchen stove until I’m sure the chimney is sound,” she explained.

Mr. Emerson telephoned the news to his grandchildren and he and all the Mortons with Dorothy and her mother and Miss Merriam and Elisabeth arrived at the farm at almost the same time.

“I’m glad the house is in as good condition as it seems to be,” exclaimed Mrs. Morton.  “I couldn’t bear to have the old homestead fall to ruin.  I was startled at Father’s message.”

“Not so startled as all the people here were in the night,” laughed her father who had been talking with Mrs. Schuler.  “It seems that the worst noise came after the electric storm was over, but while the wind was at its highest.”

“The chimney wasn’t struck by lightning, then.”

“It was not lightning,” asserted Mr. Schuler.  “The wind knocked bricks from the top of the chimney.  I saw one or two on the roof this morning.  As you see, several fell down the chimney into the fireplace.”

“I can’t see how bricks from the top of the chimney could have made the crack in the kitchen side of the chimney and this crack in the back of the fireplace.”

“Nor I,” agreed Mr. Schuler.  “The roar was tremendous.  I could not believe that I was seeing rightly when I beheld only these few fallen bricks.”

“It sounded as if the whole chimney had fallen,” Mrs. Schuler confirmed her husband’s assertion.

“Mrs. Peterson says it sounded to her like an explosion, sir,” said Moya, who had been talking with the women on the porch.  “Her room is right over this.  The bricks fell through the chimney, banging it all the way, says she, and thin there was a roar like powder had gone off, as far as I can understand what she says.”

“If Mrs. Paterno heard that she must have thought the Black Hand was getting in its fine work, sure enough,” smiled Mr. Emerson.

“Praise be, her room is on the other side of the house.  We were all wailing like banshees up there, but she no more than the rest.  ’Tis better she is,” and Moya nodded reassuringly to the grown-ups, who were, she knew, deeply interested in the Italian woman’s recovery of her nervous strength.

“This explosion business I don’t understand,” Mr. Emerson said slowly to himself.  “What did you find in the fireplace this morning, Moya?  I wish you had left all the stuff here for me to see.”