be, was engraved writing. Sand had seeped into the case; the inscription was obliterated in part.
"For his courage and skill in seam . . . master of . . . which he brought to the rescue of the passengers and crew of the steamer Winnebago foundering . . . Point, Lake Erie, November 26th, 1890, this watch is donated by the Buffalo Merchants' Exchange."
Uncle Benny's name, evidently, had been engraved upon the outside. Constance could not particularly remember the rescue of the people of the Winnebago; 1890 was years before she was born, and Uncle Benny did not tell her that sort of thing about himself.
The watch, she saw now, must have lain in water, for the hands under the crystal were rusted away and the face was all streaked and cracked. She opened the back of the watch and exposed the works; they too were rusted and filled with sand. Constance left the watch open and, shivering a little, she gently laid it down upon her bed. The pocket knife had no distinguishing mark of any sort; it was just a man's ordinary knife with the steel turned to rust and with sand in it too. The coins were abraded and pitted discs—a silver dollar, a half dollar and three quarters, not so much abraded, three nickels, and two pennies.
Constance choked, and her eyes filled with tears. These things—plainly they were the things found in Uncle Benny's pockets—corroborated only too fully what Wassaquam believed and what her father had been coming to believe—that Uncle Benny was dead. The muffler and the scrap of paper had not been in water or in sand. The paper was written in pencil; it had not even been moistened or it would have blurred.
