ago--before Martha was born, in fact. Mamma had told her about it
one day; how there was no key to it, because Uncle Walter wished it
to remain unopened until he returned home; and how this wandering
uncle, who was a mighty hunter, had gone into Africa to hunt
elephants and had never been heard from afterwards.

The little girl looked at the chest curiously, now that it had by
accident attracted her attention.

It was quite big--bigger even than mamma's traveling trunk--and was
studded all over with tarnished brassheaded nails. It was heavy,
too, for when Martha tried to lift one end of it she found she could
not stir it a bit. But there was a place in the side of the cover
for a key. She stooped to examine the lock, and saw that it would
take a rather big key to open it.

Then, as you may suspect, the little girl longed to open Uncle
Walter's big box and see what was in it. For we are all curious, and
little girls are just as curious as the rest of us.

"I don't b'lieve Uncle Walter'll ever come back," she thought. "Papa
said once that some elephant must have killed him. If I only had a
key--" She stopped and clapped her little hands together gayly as
she remembered a big basket of keys on the shelf in the linen
closet. They were of all sorts and sizes; perhaps one of them would
unlock the mysterious chest!

She flew down the stairs, found the basket and returned with it to
the attic. Then she sat down before the brass-studded box and began
trying one key after another in the curious old lock. Some were too