“That’s Darius Holt’s lantern, I do believe,” he declared.  “The one Winnie S. was makin’ such a fuss about last night.  How in the nation did it get up here?”

Thankful laughed.  “I brought it up,” she said.  “I come on a little explorin’ cruise when Emily dropped asleep on that sittin’-room lounge, but I hadn’t much more’n got in here when the pesky thing went out.  You ought to have seen me hurryin’ along that hall to get down before you woke up, Emily.  No, come to think of it, you couldn’t have seen me—­’twas too dark to see anything. . . .  Well,” she added, quickly, in order to head off troublesome questioning, “we’ve looked around here pretty well.  What else is there to see?”

They visited the garret and the cellar; both were spacious and not too clean.

“If I ever come here to live,” declared Thankful, with decision, “there’ll be some dustin’ and sweepin’ done, I know that.”

Emily looked at her in surprise.

“Come here to live!” she repeated.  “Why, Auntie, are you thinking of coming here to live?”

Her cousin’s answer was not very satisfactory.  “I’ve been thinkin’ a good many things lately,” she said.  “Some of ’em was even more crazy than that sounds.”

The inside of the house having been thus thoroughly inspected they explored the yard and the outbuildings.  The barn was a large one, with stalls for two horses and a cow and a carriage-room with the remnants of an old-fashioned carryall in it.

“This is about the way it used to be in Cap’n Abner’s day,” said Captain Obed.  “That carryall belonged to your uncle, the cap’n, Mrs. Barnes.  The boys have had it out for two or three Fourth of July Antiques and Horribles’ parades; ’twon’t last for many more by the looks of it.”

“And what,” asked Thankful, “is that?  It looks like a pigsty.”

They were standing at the rear of the house, which was built upon a slope.  Under the washshed, which adjoined the kitchen, was a rickety door.  Beside that door was a boarded enclosure which extended both into the yard and beneath the washshed.

Captain Bangs laughed.  “You’ve guessed it, first crack,” he said.  “It is a pigpen.  Some of Laban’s doin’s, that is.  He used to keep a pig and ’twas too much trouble to travel way out back of the barn to feed it, so Labe rigged up this contraption.  That door leads into the potato cellar.  Labe fenced off half the cellar to make a stateroom for the pig.  He thought as much of that hog as if ’twas his own brother, and there was a sort of family likeness.”

Thankful snorted.  “A pigsty under the house!” she said.  “Well, that’s all I want to know about that man!”

As they were returning along the foot-path by the bluff Captain Obed, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly stopped.

“That’s kind of funny,” he said.

“What?” asked Emily.