did. When he sat down at the table his father and mother were talking

about Mary--their hired girl--and the man she had in the kitchen just then.

“Well,” Wampus’s mother was saying, “I did not like the looks of him, but Mary said he was her cousin, so I said she could give him some supper in the kitchen.”

“That’s all right, of course, for this one time,” Wampus’s father said then, “but don’t let the fellow hang around here. I think he is a tough customer, judging by his looks. He has a bad eye. If he had two eyes, I would say he had two bad eyes, but the one eye he has is bad enough to satisfy any one.”

“I know,” Wampus’s mother said, “but I felt rather sorry for him because he has only one leg.”

Wampus had been waiting for a chance to talk, because he was so eager to tell about the 1804 dollar and the treasure, and now he had the chance, and he lit into it. He handed the dollar to his father and went on to tell him about all of us finding it, and about Jibby Jones guessing there was hidden treasure, but he would not say where we had found the dollar nor where the treasure was. He was too smart for that, because just then Mary came in with the supper she had been keeping hot in the oven for him. She stood around and listened while they talked about the treasure and the 1804 dollar and how valuable it was, but Wampus did not think anything about that, because Mary had been their hired girl for a couple of years.

“And how much treasure does your Jibby Jones think you will find?” Mr. Smale asked Wampus.

“He don’t know,” Wampus said. “Maybe thousands of dollars. Maybe none. But, anyway, we’ve got this dollar and it ought to be worth almost a thousand dollars, Jibby says.”

They went on talking it over, and Mr. Smale was sort of amused and did not believe in the treasure much, but Wampus wouldn’t say where we had been, or when we were going to dig for the treasure, and Mary went into the kitchen. So that was all of that.

Then Wampus told his father and mother that the one-legged man Mary had in the kitchen was the Tough Customer that Orph Cadwallader had run off the island, but neither Mr. Smale nor Mrs. Smale seemed to think much about it. All Mr. Smale said was: “He had no business on the island, but I suppose it is all right for Mary to feed a cousin once in a while. How about it, mother?”

“It has to be,” Mrs. Smale said; “it is so hard to get help these days.”