Dawn was breaking when Paulina left the two girls, telling Jannet that she intended to watch for the return of Vittoria. Jannet persuaded Nell to lie down on her bed, but she was too highly keyed over the whole affair to feel sleepy. At a suitable time she would call Uncle Pieter and tell him about the discovery. Meanwhile she would go by herself to investigate that queer little box of a room.

Nell went soundly to sleep in a few minutes, feeling perfectly safe from ghosts now in Jannet’s room. Jannet sat quietly at her desk until she was quite assured that Nell was asleep. Then she rose, picked up her flashlight and the “darling” candlestick with its white candle which always stood upon her mantel, a few matches upon its base, and started for the attic stairway rather than going by the panel. It might waken Nell.

The door of the attic stood open. Paulina, the neat, careful Paulina, had been too much excited to think of closing it! The trap door so near the partition also stood open. Jannet peered at a crack in the rough partition. Yes, there was the outline of where the top of the secret room stood above the attic floor on the other side of the partition. A pile of lumber, a few odds and ends of boards, rafters and even a few bricks were cleverly arranged to give the impression of waste material and nothing important, should anyone be curious enough to peep through. Now, where below was there room for the rest of the secret chamber? But Jannet recalled the long flight of stairs to the attic. Ceilings were high in the old house. She recalled, too, that the smooth ceilings of her closet and the one corresponding to it were quite low, perhaps to conceal any evidence of the circular stairs. The few steps down from the attic floor accounted for the secret room below such part of it as was raised above the attic floor, its outlines concealed.

Jannet could see a glimmer of light from the outside, when she looked down into the dark well where the ladder led to the ground floor at the very wall of the house. She recalled little jogs and irregularities downstairs, but could not place this for a moment. Yet from some cracks somewhere the morning sunlight came dimly through.

“The queer little tool house!” she suddenly thought. She had wondered why in the world that had been inserted in a brick wall. It was shallow and Jannet remembered a sort of rude table that stood against its back wall, “probably concealing the entrance to this secret way,” with its queer ladder nailed to the wood of the enclosure.

How thrilling it was! Cousin Diana, when she showed Jannet around had mentioned the tool house and let Jannet peep within when they came to it. “When the wings were built on, this was naturally sealed in,” Cousin Diana had said, “but when Pieter took them away, he painted up the quaint entrance with its odd latch and open lattice.” Perhaps the very ease of entering the tool house would make no one suspect a concealed ascent behind it.

She turned to the right and opened the sliding door, finding it more easily opened now that she knew how. She was surprised to find light here, and looking above, she saw a round window, or ventilator at the top of the room on the side of the house wall. This, doubtless, matched the other one in the attic. But it supplied little light, and she looked around for a place to set her candlestick. She sat it down on the shelf, which had most probably been provided for a narrow bed, and saw that a board or leaf hung down from the wall on hinges. The hinges were rusty, but still good and Jannet succeeded in raising the board and propping it with the stick attached, which fitted into a place in the wall beneath. That was the table, then. It had held the ghost costume.

Jannet’s imagination was working in good order. With a smile she lit her candle. “Now I’m ‘captive’ or ‘fugitive,’ back in the old days, and there is a price on my head, perhaps, and I haven’t anything to eat,”—but Jannet’s heels struck against something of tin that made her look under the shelf to see what was there. The room was perfectly bare except at this place, and Jannet saw only an uninteresting pile of pans and dishes in one corner, all covered thick with dust. An old wooden box, a wooden pail falling to pieces, and a tin or metal kettle of an odd sort stood in a row. Jannet could scarcely see, through the dust, that the “tin” kettle was of pewter. But Jannet did not like pewter things anyhow. Cousin Di had laughed at her for this distaste.

“He certainly kept everything under his bed,” thought Jannet, in no hurry to touch the dusty things. But under the wooden box she saw the corner of something made of leather sticking out. With the tips of her fingers the stooping Jannet drew out a queer old portfolio. This promised to be of interest. Jannet decided to investigate it right on the spot, though she wished that she had brought a dust cloth.

But she sacrificed her clean handkerchief to the cause and after blowing off some of the dust she wiped off most of the rest. Opening out the decaying leather, she found that one pocket had a few papers in it. There was a torn paper, conveying some property, that she thought would be interesting to Uncle Pieter, as she glanced at the old writing and the Dutch names. But what was this,—oh, how perfectly wonderful!

For the next ten minutes there was perfect silence in the box of a room, while the candle fluttered a little and Jannet, wrapt in what she was reading, almost lost sight of where she was. Many and many a long year before, some one had read those little notes tucked away in the old portfolio with as much interest and more anxiety. “Dere Father,” ran the first that Jannet pulled from the sticky leather at the side. “It is hard to get the food to the attic without being seen. The Captin watches us or some one is there while we are cooking. But they watch my mother more than they watch me. I put the food on the stair and tapped, but you were asleep, perhaps. I heard a noise and I hastened to go up and closed the trap. There was no one here. Now I will drop this down quickly. It is a good thing that I keep my dolls in the attick. They let me play here. I was eating some bread and having my table spread for my dolls when the Captin looked within the door to see what I was doing this morning. I put my old doll’s head on the flagon of water and wrapped it in the plaid coat that Mistress Patience made for the doll that you brought from England.” (And Jannet had found little dishes and dolls in the pretty box of dark wood, whose key had been discovered!)

No name was signed to this. It had been folded tightly to be dropped at the entrance, Jannet thought, for it was greatly mussed and difficult to read.

A small piece of paper with a large grease spot bore a short message. “I made these for you. Mother says that they are tasty.”

“Probably doughnuts,” smiled Jannet, looking at the grease spot.

But here was a longer letter and in another, older hand. It began without address, or was but a part of the entire message.

“I can only pray that you may not be discovered. Your rash act in opening the panel and entering the room where the captain was sleeping to get the covering, was successful in a way that you may not have considered. The captain did make a to-do about it when he saw that it was not a dream. The men will not go into the room nor will they go into the attic since the wind has been making music there. The tale is that a gaunt ghost, with a clank of sword, appeared by the bed and snatched the quilt from upon the captain. The door was locked and the guard outside saw no one, yet the quilt was gone. For my sake, Pieter, do not be rash. I will continue to leave word of their movements. It will be safer to visit the attic now, I hope. Noises there are thought to be the ghost. Jannetje pretended to be frightened, but she can yet visit her dolls at times. No very good word comes from our troops. Our Tory neighbor doth rejoice in unseemly fashion for one who pretended to be our friend and he is oft at our door in converse with the captain. I am watched at all times, but I lock my door and write when I am thus alone, putting my messages inside the little waists of Jannetje, who was ten years of age but yesterday.”

The writing stopped at the bottom of the sheet.

One more large piece of paper was written in the childish hand, but contained only a short message. The paper had been wrapped about something, Jannet thought. So Jannetje was another ancestress of the name. She spelled and composed well for a child of ten, Jannet decided.

“Mother sends this,” the message said. “Trupers leave to-day. She thinks that they were only searching for you or waiting for messages from spies. Wait, she says, till she can come to the attick after the Captin goes away.”

This was all. It had happened in Revolutionary times, of course. Jannet’s imagination could supply the missing information, or some of it. Her ancestor had perhaps been visiting his family when the group of British soldiers came upon them too soon for him to escape. Or perhaps he was, indeed, in the work of a spy for General Washington’s troops. Wouldn’t her uncle and Andy be delighted to read these old messages, so yellowed with age! Carefully Jannet put them again inside of the portfolio, though that, too, was ready to fall apart.

Thinking that there might be some further scrap of information somewhere, Jannet began to examine the dusty articles under the shelf or bed. Any bedding that had once been there had probably been removed as soon as the fugitive had found it no longer necessary to stay there. These other things were of no particular value.

But Jannet had scarcely begun to move the round pewter pot from its long resting place when she heard a sound that startled her. She jumped to her feet with a moment’s panic. Suppose Vittoria, for she was almost sure that the ghost was Vittoria, was hiding somewhere and—but a voice assured her, before she was fairly on her feet. There was Cousin Andy’s dear head at the top of the secret stairs and peeping in. “What’s all this?” he cheerily inquired. “Are you trying to burn up the house with a candle?”

“Oh no; I’m ever so careful,—but do look out, Cousin Andy, for those are bad stairs!”

“Would you care, then, if the old wreck got hurt again?”

“‘Old wreck’, indeed! You’re the best first cousin that I’ve got, and I’m proud of your scars, if you have any!”

Andrew Van Meter entered and looked curiously around. “I see that there is a sliding door on this side, too, though Nell did not mention it. She had a telephone message from home, by the way, and left word for you that she was riding over later in the day if she could. She did not know where you were, she said, but when I heard the story I could pretty well guess.”

“I did not realize that you all would be up, I’ve stayed longer here than I intended to. Oh, Andy,—Cousin Andy—I’ve found the most interesting messages in this old portfolio!”

“Take it with you, then, but I want to see first the way to the attic.”

Cousin Andy needed no help up the little steps, but looked down at the ladder and the dark descent. “You were wise not to attempt that, Jannet,” said he. “Yes, that must be an opening to the old tool house. That was a pretty clever stunt of the old codger who built this, with three ways of exit, through the attic, the tool house, and your mother’s room. But I would not have cared to occupy that little room for any length of time. A six footer would almost graze the ceiling. Yet he could sit comfortably, or stretch out on that shelf.”

“Do you suppose that Jan ever found this?” Jannet asked, while they made their way to the other end of the attic, after Andy had viewed the partition, and the old carpet, and other things kept over the trap door.

“I do not think so. He would have told us. But it is a wonder that Paulina, with her tendency to clean up, has not found the trap door some time during all these years.”

“She was afraid of ghosts, Cousin Andy, but I should think that the workmen might have found it when they wired the house for lights.”

“It is strange, but they missed it somehow.”

Andrew viewed with some amusement the little bed made comfortable for the night and the rocking chair with its comforter and little pillow. The pitcher, which had held the lemonade, and the cooky plate still remained on the floor. “You missed some of your fudge,” said Andy, picking up a piece and putting it in his mouth as he sat down on the bed and looked around. “It is some time since I have been in this attic. I never cared for attics; I was always for outdoor sports. Did you know that I can ride again, Jannet?”

“Yes, and I’m so glad. Did you know that I had a long talk with Uncle Pieter, and that I’m going to stay in the family and not go back to school?”

“Good. Sensible girl. Dad and I need somebody like you around.”

“I shouldn’t think that Uncle Pieter needed any more responsibility, and I heard Miss Hilliard say once that every young person was.”

“Dad doesn’t regard you in that way, I guess. I think that you are an opportunity.”

“Why, aren’t you nice! Oh, it is so good to have a family! Shall you feel like going if Uncle takes me traveling a little bit?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, if it will make me well. I had no hope of ever being well again until a few weeks ago, Jannet, but things look very different now.”

Jannet, looking at the more hopeful face, was delighted within herself, for did she not know of someone that was coming this summer, if Cousin Di could manage it? Dear Cousin Andy would be happy yet.

But another surprise was at hand for Jannet, for as Andrew spoke they heard some one in the little hallway, and there in the door stood Cousin Diana and—of all things—Jan!

“Hello, Jannetje,” said Jan’s none too gentle voice. “So you beat me to it! I’m provoked that I could not have discovered the secret room. How do you get there? I just got in and surprised Mother. Say, I was the fellow that took the blue comforter, but I got in a different way. I was home the night before you all knew I was there and I had no idea that there was any one in the room. It was always kept locked anyhow. So I just sneaked in and got a cover. The closet didn’t seem to have any and my bed had only one blanket.”

“Why, Jan! And you never saw me or anything?”

“Never even thought of your being there. I knew the way to the bed and I helped myself. If you will be good, I’ll show you how I got in after I see all this.”

Jan was off to investigate on his own account, but Jannet detained Mrs. Holt long enough to ask her if Vittoria had come in yet.

“No, she has not reported at all. You feel pretty sure that it was she?”

“Yes, Cousin Di. I’ll tell you all about it the first chance I have. But I suppose that Nell gave you a good description of our night up here.”

“She did, indeed. You poor children! I slept on peacefully after our late drive home, not knowing that you youngsters were having such a time. You should have called us.”

“No use in waking you up, I thought. Where is Uncle Pieter?”

“He had to go out on the farm, but he talked with Paulina and he wants to see you as soon as he comes in. Here he comes now!”

Stooping and brushing off dust, Mr. Van Meter came from the back, or more properly the front of the attic. He was smiling and remarked that he passed an excited boy on the way. “This is a new place for a family conference,” he added. “We have come up in the world, I see.”

But Jannet, tired as she was after her experiences of the night, liked this close gathering with its entire loss of all formality. She jokingly offered him the rocking chair, but slipped a hand in his as she told him of the portfolio and its amazing notes. “Nobody could have made them up and put them there, could they?”

Uncle Pieter, surprised, put on his glasses and looked at the leather portfolio with its old pockets. “I think not, Jannet, but let us go down to the library and you shall tell me the whole story from the first. I can not get a very connected narrative from Paulina.”

Andy threw back his head and laughed at this remark. “Imagine any one’s getting a connected narrative from P’lina about anything!”

Jannet displayed the old dolls and dishes which the small box contained. “If they prove to be the ones referred to,” said Uncle Pieter, “I may have a case made for them and the portfolio.”