jacket tucked under her arm. When she reached the house, she spied
Mr. White just coming out of the back door with a milking pail. He
carried a lantern, too, for it was hardly light.

He stopped, and stared, when Ann ran up to him.

"Mr. White," said she, all breathless, "here's--something--I guess
yer didn't see yesterday."

Mr. White set down the milk pail, took the blue jacket which she
handed him, and scrutinized it sharply, by the light of the lantern.

"I guess we _didn't_ see it," said he, finally.

"I will put it down--it's worth about three pence, I judge. Where"--

"Silas, Silas!" called a shrill voice from the house. Silas White
dropped the jacket and trotted briskly in, his lantern bobbing
agitatedly. He never delayed a moment when his wife called; important
and tyrannical as the little man was abroad, he had his own tyrant at
home.

Ann did not wait for him to return; she snatched up the blue jacket
and fled home, leaping like a little deer over the hoary fields. She
hung up the precious old jacket behind the shed-door again, and no
one ever knew the whole story of its entrance in the inventory. If
she had been questioned, she would have told the truth boldly,
though. But Samuel Wales' Inventory had for its last item that blue
jacket, spelled after Silas White's own individual method, as was
many another word in the long list. Silas White consulted his own