I was awakened early next morning by the clatter of a heavy wagon on the road in front of the house. Stealing to the window in order not to awaken Eve, I was just in time to catch sight of a familiar, blue-shirted figure in the driver’s seat. Michael! What was he doing in this part of town so early in the morning?

When I went downstairs I found the explanation. Eve was still asleep and, pleased to have got the start of her for once, I resolved to have breakfast on the table by the time she came down. I unlocked the kitchen door and went out to bring in the milk which is left in a pail every morning. Beside the pail I found a paste-board box. As I stooped to pick it up I saw there were holes pierced in the top. And when I lifted it—it mewed!

A cat! I pulled off the lid. No, a kitten—a plump gray one with china-blue eyes and a white spot in its forehead. The mew changed to a noisy purr as I lifted it.

“What are you doing?” Eve, looking very nice in a fresh blue linen dress, was standing in the doorway. In my absorption I had forgotten all about breakfast. Then Eve saw the kitten. “Oh, the darling! Where did you find it, Sandy?”

I pointed to the box and told her about Michael. “I suppose the idea is,” I said, “that one cat is as good as another. But I doubt very much if Aunt Cal will even give it house room!”

“Well, it was nice of him to think of it anyway!” Eve returned, cuddling the kitten. “I wonder if it’s hungry?”

Aunt Cal returned at ten o’clock. Eve was just taking a loaf of gingerbread from the oven when I heard the car. Miss Rose Blossom was at the wheel, there was no mistaking her broad figure. She was beaming at Aunt Cal as she handed down her bag.

“She’s coming!” I whispered, tiptoeing back into the kitchen. “What shall we do with Daisy June?” I glanced a little wildly toward Adam’s cushion by the stove where the kitten slept.

Before Eve could even answer, a firm step sounded outside. Aunt Cal stood in the doorway. “Well,” she inquired, “how have you been getting on?”

I stood in front of the stove. “Splendid——” I began and then, fearing I sounded too enthusiastic, I changed hastily to “All right.”

“How is your friend?” Eve asked, inserting a knife around the gingerbread.

“A little better. Her sister came over from Millport this morning, so I felt that I could leave. Mercy, child, I didn’t know you could bake!”

“Well, of course, it isn’t as good as yours,” Eve began modestly.

Aunt Cal picked up her bag and started for the stairs. It was this moment that Daisy June took to wake from her nap. With a sinking heart, I felt her between my ankles. Aunt Cal stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Where,” she inquired in a very stuffy voice, “did that come from? And where is Adam?”

I swallowed. “Adam’s visiting—visiting Captain Trout,” I said.

My relative’s face became stonier than before. “Take that cat out of the house!” she ordered.

I took a deep breath and counted ten. Then picking up Daisy June, I retreated to the side yard. Eve joined me there presently, carrying the box of carpet rags we were sewing for Aunt Cal. “Eve,” I asked solemnly, “what is to become of her?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t believe that anything so adorable wasn’t brought into the world for a purpose.”

We didn’t get much sewing done that morning for practically every time we picked up a strip of cloth Daisy June was dangling on the end of it and as fast as Eve wound the balls, the kitten unwound them. When we went in for dinner, we left her sleeping peacefully in the box. She at any rate had no misgivings about the future.

“I see somebody has been trampling the petunia bed,” remarked Aunt Cal, dishing out lamb stew and dumplings. “But I suppose it’s no more than is to be expected when one leaves things to take care of themselves!”

It was Eve who persuaded my aunt to go upstairs after dinner for a rest. “After being up all night,” she urged, “it’s the only sensible thing to do.” And though Aunt Cal declared stoutly that she did not hold with naps in the daytime, she finally yielded.

After we had finished the dishes Eve carried out a saucer of milk for Daisy June. To our dismay the kitten was gone. There was her bed of carpet rags, still matted where her soft form had lain, but no sign of its late occupant. We searched every corner of the yard, calling softly so that Aunt Cal would not hear. But neither the yard nor garden yielded any trace of her.

Could she have got through the hedge, I wondered? I went to look. And there she was, big as life, sauntering up the path toward the Captain’s back door. I beckoned to Eve. “Look,” I whispered, “for all the world as if she was about to drop in on a friend for tea or something!”

I was about to pop through the hedge after her when the back door of the house opened and the owner himself emerged. He was jauntily dressed in immaculate white trousers and a nautical blue jacket. I wondered how he managed, living alone as he did, always to look so spick and span. He was descending the steps when he met the kitten. “Bless my boots!” The words floated across the quiet air. “Now where in blazes did you come from?”

Daisy June’s answer was to leap up the intervening step and begin her accustomed twining movement about the Captain’s ankle. I hurried forward. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I began, “we do have such trouble with our cats!”

Daisy June continued to twine like a boa constrictor. The Captain retreated and abruptly sat down in the big rocker which occupied the center of the porch. Without hesitation the kitten jumped into his lap. I thought for a second that he was going to push her down, but instead he asked abruptly, “How’s your aunt this morning? Much upset, was she?”

I collected my thoughts. “Oh, you mean about Adam,” I was beginning, when Eve came up behind me. “Aunt Cal wouldn’t allow herself to be upset by so little a thing as that,” she said with one of her dazzling smiles. “She’s much too—a—strong-minded.”

The Captain appeared as surprised as I was to hear this. “Well, well, well,” he said, “I want to know!” Mechanically, it seemed, his hand went out to stroke the kitten’s back and, thus encouraged, she reached up one fat paw for the large gold chain that spanned his waistcoat. “Hi, there, look at that now! Caliph allus used to go after that chain when he was a kitten. Well,” he added, “I’m glad to hear your aunt wasn’t upset. Old Judd Craven allus did say she was the only sensible one in the family!”

“Judd Craven?” I repeated. “Who was he?”

“What? What’s that? Mean to say you ain’t never heard of Cap’n Judd? Why, he was related to you in a sort of way.”

“Related to me? But how? Do you mean that he was related to Aunt Cal?”

“Mercy me, yes. He was her uncle. Cal’s mother was Susan Craven. Cap’n Judd used to set great store by Cal when she was a young one, used to bring her things every time he come back from a voyage.”

Eve dropped down on the step. “Do tell us about Captain Judd,” she begged. “You see, we were up at the place they call Craven House the other day, so we’re interested. Did he build it?”

The Captain shook his head. “No, it was an old house—dates back to the early settlers. Cap’n Judd bought it and made it over. It was one of the show places of the countryside in his day. He fixed it up for his wife, Emily, who wanted to live inland out of sight of the sea. Emily hated the sea. Besides that, Judd had a kind of notion he wanted to go in for farming. It was the dream of his life to found a landed estate like the ones he’d seen in England—handed down from father to son like. But—well, it didn’t work out. Carter didn’t take to farming; he was a restless chap, wanted to see the world.”

“Carter was his son?” I prompted.

“Aye, Carter was his only child.”

“It sounds quite like a story out of a book,” Eve commented.

The Captain chuckled. “Yeah, it would make good reading, I calculate, if all the facts of Judd’s career was set down. A lively old bird he was, full of funny ideas, allus getting himself talked about. Not in a bad way, you understand, just odd—doing things different from the run of folks.”

“Was it he who set up those statues and vases and things in the garden?” I asked.

“Aye, that was one of the things. Those statues made a great stir. Folks round here had never heard tell of statues in a garden. They used to drive from all around just to see ’em.”

“But where in the world did he get them?” asked Eve. “They look awfully old.”

“Uh-huh, they was meant to. Judd said he got ’em from a Greek temple, but I guess more likely he picked them up in a second-hand shop in Athens. Judd allus was one for a joke. There was one he called Mercury and one Diana.”

“Diana—Mercury,” Eve repeated thoughtfully. “There wasn’t—wasn’t one called Circe, was there?”

I held my breath. The Captain began to fill his pipe. “Circe? Well now, there might have been at that; I can’t rightly tell all the names he gave ’em.”

“Tell me,” Eve demanded, leaning forward with sudden eagerness, “did Captain Craven leave any—any money—or valuables or anything?”

Captain Trout shook his head. “I guess Carter got most of the money before the old man died. Judd used to say in his later days that all he had in the world was the place. That and the blue emerald,” he added, with a chuckle.

“The blue emerald?” I cried. “But how could an emerald be blue? I thought they were green.”

“That’s what I never could figger out myself,” the Captain answered. “I never saw it myself. Some said it was give him by a Rajah in India ’count of some service he done him. But the Cap’n allus was pretty mysterious about it—liked to keep folks guessing. Me, I didn’t take much stock in that Rajah chap. But most folks used to eat up the whole story.”

“Did anyone ever see the emerald?”

“Never heard as they did. But then I was away for years. After the Cap’n retired and built his house, I didn’t see him very often. But every now and then when I’d come home, I’d hear talk about the blue emerald and every time it was wo’th a little more. It sure had the villagers mesmerized.”

“And Captain Judd’s son?” I asked hesitantly. “What became of him?”

The Captain puffed on his pipe and absently put down his hand to stroke the kitten’s back. “Carter disappeared about a year after his father’s death,” he said. “I ain’t heard tell of him since.”

“He didn’t,” inquired Eve, “take the blue emerald with him, did he?”

“Some said so,” Captain Trout answered. “But I reckon no one rightly knows. But the house—that rightly belongs to your aunt, I was told.”

“To Aunt Cal!” I cried in astonishment.

“Aye. Judd promised her she should have it. But the will, they say, was never found. Some say Carter didn’t want it should be, that he was jealous of Cal for bein’ in the old man’s good graces. But that’s just gossip, I reckon.”

“I think Captain Judd must have been a very interesting person,” declared Eve. “I wish I’d known him.”

“Aye, he was a fine chap. Great loss to the community, his death was.”

“Thank you very much for telling us about him,” I said. I felt that we ought to go back before Aunt Cal came downstairs. I got up, looking doubtfully at the sleeping kitten. It seemed a pity to disturb her.

The Captain appeared to read my thoughts. “Better let her sleep,” he said. “You can stop by for her later—if you want.”

As he uttered these words, I was conscious that another figure had joined our group. Adam had come out of the open kitchen door. He stood for a moment surveying us, advanced to the Captain, sniffed gingerly at the object in his lap; then, without a word—as it were—turned and walked down the steps.

“Caliph,” called the Captain, “where you going?” But only a wave of the tail answered him.

When we got back to our house, a half emptied saucer of fish was on the back porch and Caliph, alias Adam, was asleep on his cushion by the stove.

“I feel,” I giggled, “a little dizzy with all this cat business!”

“To say nothing,” added Eve, “of blue emeralds!”