When she looked up her eyes were tragic. But she only said very quietly:

"It is my brother's writing!"

CHAPTER XII

LIGHT DAWNS ON MISS CAMILLA

"What do you make of it all, Sally?"

The two girls were sitting in the pine grove on the heights of Slipper Point. They sat each with her back against a tree and with the enchanting view of the upper river spread out panoramically before them.

Each of them was knitting,--an accomplishment they had both recently acquired.

"I can't make anything of it at all, and I've thought of it day and night ever since," was Sally's reply. "It's three weeks now since the day we came through that tunnel and discovered where it ended. And except what Miss Camilla told us that day, she's never mentioned a thing about it since."

"It's strange, how she stopped short, just after she'd said the writing was her brother's," mused Doris. "And then asked us in the next breath not to question her about it any more, and to forgive her silence in the matter because it probably concerned something that was painful to her."

"Yes, and kept the paper we found in the cave," went on Sally. "I believe she wanted to study it out and see what she could make of it. If she's sure it was written by her brother, she will probably be able to puzzle it out better than we would. One thing, I guess, is certain, though. It isn't any secret directions where to find treasure. All our little hopes about that turned out very differently, didn't they?"

"Sally, are you glad or sorry we've discovered what we did about that cave?" demanded Doris suddenly.

"Oh, glad, of course," was Sally's reply. "At first, I was awfully disgusted to think all my plans and hopes about it and finding buried treasure and all that had come to nothing. But, do you know what has made me feel differently about it?" She looked up quickly at Doris.

"No, what?" asked her companion curiously.

"It's Miss Camilla herself," answered Sally. "I used to think you were rather silly to be so crazy about her and admire her so much. I'd never thought anything about her and I'd known her most all my life. But since she asked us that day to come and see her as often as we liked and stop at her house whenever we were up this way, and consider her as our friend, I've somehow come to feel differently. I'm glad we took her at her word and did it. I don't think I would have, if it hadn't been for you. But you've insisted on our stopping at her house so frequently, and we've become so well acquainted with her that I really think I--I almost--love her."

It pleased Doris beyond words to hear Sally make this admission. She wanted Sally to appreciate all that was fine and admirable and lovely in Miss Camilla, even if she were poor and lonely and deaf. She felt that the friendship would be good for Sally, and she knew that she herself was profiting by the increased acquaintance with this friend they had so strangely made.

"Wasn't it nice of her to teach us to knit?" went on Sally. "She said we all ought to be doing it now to help out our soldiers, since the country is at war."

"She's taught me lots beside that," said Doris. "I just love to hear her talk about old potteries and porcelains and that sort of thing. I do believe she knows more about them than even grandfather does. She's making me crazy to begin a collection myself some day when I'm old enough. She must have had a fine collection once. I do wonder what became of it."

"Well, I don't understand much about all that talk," admitted Sally. "I never saw any porcelains worth while in all my life, except that little thing she has on her mantel. And I don't see anything to get so crazy about in that. It's kind of pretty, of course, but why get excited about it? What puzzles me more is why she never has said what became of all her other things."

"That's a part of the mystery," said Doris. "And her brother's mixed up in it somehow, and perhaps her father. That much I'm sure of. She talks freely enough about everything else except those things, so that must be it. Do you know what I'm almost tempted to think? That her brother _did_ commit some crime, and her father hid him away in the cave to escape from justice, but she couldn't have known about it, that's plain.

Because she did not know about the cave and tunnel at all till just lately. Perhaps she wondered what became of him. And maybe they sold all her lovely porcelains to make up for what he'd done somehow."

"Yes," cried Sally in sudden excitement. "And another idea has just come to me. Maybe that queer paper was a note her brother left for her and she can't make out how to read it. Did you ever think of that?"

"Why, no!" exclaimed Doris, struck with the new idea. "I never thought of it as anything he might have left for _her_. Do you remember, she said once they were awfully fond of each other, more even than most brothers and sisters? It would be perfectly natural if he _did_ want to leave her a note, if he had to go away and perhaps never come back. And of course he wouldn't want any one else to understand what it said. Oh, wait!--I have an idea we've never thought of before. Why on earth have we been so _stupid_!--"

She sprang up and began to walk about excitedly, while Sally watched her, consumed with curiosity. At length she could bear the suspense no longer.

"Well, for pity's sake tell me what you've thought of!" she demanded.

"I'll go wild if you keep it to yourself much longer."

"Where's that copy?" was all Doris would reply. "I want to study it a moment." Sally drew it from her pocket and handed it to her, and Doris spent another five minutes regarding it absorbedly.

"It is. It surely is!" she muttered, half to herself. "But how are we ever going to think out how to work it?" At last she turned to the impatient Sally.

"I'm a fool not to have thought of this before, Sally. I read a book once,--I can't think what it was now, but it was some detective story,--where there was something just a little like this. Not that it looked like this, but the idea was the same. If it is what I think, it isn't the note itself at all. The note, if there is one, must be somewhere else. This is only a secret _code_, or arrangement of the letters, so that one can read the note by it. Probably the real note is written in such a way that it could never be understood at all without this. Do you understand?"

Sally had indeed grasped the idea and was wildly excited by it.

"Oh, Doris," she cried admiringly. "You certainly _are_ a wonder to have thought all this out! It's ten times as interesting as what we first thought it was. But how do you work this code? I can't make anything out of it at all."

"Well, neither can I, I'll have to admit. But here's what I _think_. If we could see what that note itself looks like, we could perhaps manage to puzzle out just how this code works."

"But how are we going to do that?" demanded Doris. "Only Miss Camilla has the note, if there _is_ a _note_, and certainly we couldn't very well ask her to let us see it, especially after what she said to us that day."

"No, we couldn't, I suppose," said Doris, thoughtfully. "And yet--" she hesitated. "I somehow feel perfectly certain that Miss Camilla doesn't know the meaning of all this yet, hasn't even guessed what we have, about this paper. She doesn't act so. Maybe she doesn't even know there _is_ a note,--you can't tell. If she hasn't guessed, it would be a mercy to tell her, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so," admitted Sally dubiously. "But I wouldn't know how to go about it. Would you?"

"I could only try and do my best, and beg her to forgive me if I were intruding," said Doris. "Yes, I believe she ought to be told. You can't tell how she may be worrying about all this. She acts awfully worried, seems to me. Not at all like she did when we first knew her. I believe we ought to tell her right now. Call Genevieve and we'll go over."

Sally called to Genevieve, who was playing in the boat on the beach below, and that young lady soon came scrambling up the bank. Hand in hand, all three started to the home of Miss Camilla and when they had reached it, found her sitting on her tiny porch knitting in apparently placid content. But, true to Doris's observation, there were anxious lines in her face that had not been seen a month ago. She greeted them, however, with real pleasure, and with her usual hospitality proffered refreshments, this time in the shape of some early peaches she had gathered only that morning.

But Doris who, with Sally's consent, had const.i.tuted herself spokesman, before accepting the refreshment, began:

"Miss Camilla, I wonder if you'll forgive us for speaking of something to you? It may seem as if we were intruding, but we really don't intend to."

"Why, speak right on," exclaimed that lady in surprise. "You are too well-bred to be intrusive, that I know. If you feel you must speak of something to me, I know it is because you think it wise or necessary."

Much relieved by this a.s.surance, Doris went on, explaining how she had suddenly had a new idea concerning the mysterious paper and detailing what she thought it might be. As she proceeded, a new light of comprehension seemed to creep into the face of Miss Camilla, who had been listening intently.

"So we think it must be a code,--a secret code,--Miss Camilla. And if you happen to have any queer sort of note or communication that you've never been able to make out, why this may explain it," she added.

When she had finished, Miss Camilla sat perfectly still--thinking. She thought so long and so intently that it seemed as if she must have forgotten completely the presence of the three on the porch with her.

And after what seemed an interminable period, she did a strange thing.

Instead of replying with so much as a word, she got up and went into the house, leaving them open-mouthed and wondering.

"Do you suppose she's angry with us?" whispered Sally. "Do you think we ought to stay?"

"No, I don't think she's angry," replied Doris in a low voice. "I think she's so--so absorbed that she hardly realizes what she's doing or that we are here. We'd better stay."

They stayed. But so long was Miss Camilla gone that even Doris began to doubt the wisdom of remaining any longer.

But presently she came back. Her recently neat dress was grimy and dishevelled. There was a streak of dust across her face and a cobweb lay on her hair. Doris guessed at once that she had been in the old, unused portion of her house. But in her hand she carried something, and resuming her seat, she laid it carefully on her knee. It was a little book about four inches wide and six or seven long, with an old-fashioned brown cover, and it was coated with what seemed to be the dust of years.

The two girls gazed at it curiously, and when Miss Camilla had got her breath, she explained:

"I can never thank you enough for what you have told me today. It throws light on something that has never been clear to me,--something that I have even forgotten for long years. If what you surmise is true, then a mystery that has surrounded my life for more than fifty years will be at last explained. It is strange that the idea did not occur to me when first you girls discovered the cave and the tunnel, but even then it remained unconnected in my mind with--_this_." She pointed to the little book in her lap. Then she went on:

"But, now, under the circ.u.mstances, I feel that I must explain it all to you, relying still on your discretion and secrecy. For I have come to know that you are both unusually trustworthy young folks. There has been a dark shadow over my life,--a darker shadow than you can perhaps imagine. I told you before of my father's opinions and leanings during the years preceding the Civil War. When that terrible conflict broke out, he insisted that I go away to Europe with my aunt and stay there as long as it lasted, providing me with ample funds to do so. I think that he did not believe at first that the struggle would be so long.