“But, Kenny, how could he bury it?”

“How often,” reminded Kenny, “has Hughie in summer wheeled him out to the orchard and left him there?  How often has he wheeled himself around the walk by the lilac bush?  And he was clever and cunning.  Could he not, from time to time, hide the money in his bathrobe and find some means of digging?”

Joan looked unconvinced.

“And where,” she said, “would my mother, who earned her living on the stage, get money?  A great deal, I mean?”

“I—­I don’t know,” said Kenny, wiping the sweat from his forehead.  “I wish I did.  Sometime or other, Joan, there has been Craig money and a lot of it.  This old house is the house of an aristocrat with money enough to gratify expensive whims.  Either the money was willed to her or with the beauty she must have had, she married it.  They are the things you and I must find out somehow.  Of one thing I am absolutely convinced.  There is money.  It did not belong to your uncle.  It is hidden somewhere on the farm.”

He told her of the fairy mill, of the old man’s gloating pride in the word miser, of All Souls’ Eve and Adam Craig’s hints about the apple tree and the lilac bush.

“And many another place,” added Kenny bitterly, “that slipped by me for I didn’t listen!”

“It is unlikely,” Joan said, “that he would find the opportunity for hiding money in so many places.  Why then did he name them all?”

“His conscience forced him to give some inkling of the spot where he had hidden money not his own.  But he purposely multiplied our chances of failure.  Joan, I’ve got to get a spade and dig up the apple-tree!”

His excitement was contagious.  Neither of them heard Hughie in the doorway until he spoke.

“Mr. O’Neill,” he said eagerly, “have you read the will?”

Kenny struck himself upon the forehead and stared at Hughie in genuine resentment.  Hughie was another problem.  But Hughie’s quiet eyes pleaded; and Hughie’s ruddy face was honest.  Kenny told him all.

“I’m not surprised,” said Hughie.  “From the minute I set foot here three years back, I said, and Hannah said, that Mr. Craig was a miser.  And it’s common talk in the village.”

But Kenny was off through the doorway with the will in his hand.  Joan and Hughie followed him to the kitchen.

Here when the will had been read again commotion seized them all.  Hughie went out to the barn to hunt a spade, Hannah trotted about talking of wraps, Hetty found a lantern for Kenny and Kenny burned his fingers lighting it, and stepped on the cat.  Joan soothed the outraged feline with a nervous laugh.  There was madness in the air.  In an interval of blank disgust in which he criticized the length of the cat’s tail and the clarion quality of his yell, Kenny fumed off barnwards in search of Hughie.  His excitement was compelling.  Hannah headed a cloaked exodus from the kitchen, chirping an astonishment which she claimed was unprecedented in her quiet life.