Uncle Pieter and Cousin Andy were no less interested than Janet in the notes which she had found in the secret room, now no longer a secret from the family. But Mr. Van Meter had given direction that all entrances should be closed and that the affair should not be made the matter of gossip.

Having before deciphered the often blurred writing on the old paper, Jannet was commissioned to read the messages to her uncle and cousin in the library. She did so, and they lost none of their point by being read by the still excited Jannet. She had often been told at school that she read with expression, but she did not see the approving, smiling glance with which her uncle looked at her cousin, as she read.

When she had finished, her uncle said, “It all fits in nicely with the genealogy so far as we have it. This house, the old one, I mean, was finished about the time of the Revolution and this room may have been an afterthought, very convenient for the owner, as it happened. I know that it was often headquarters for our troops, and probably it harbored the necessary spies. I will commission you, Jannet, to look carefully through all the trunks for old letters or messages of any sort that may tell us more of the history than we already know. From some source your mother knew much about the old stories, but I can not think that she knew of this secret way.”

“She would have told you,” said Jannet.

“I am not so sure,” said Mr. Van Meter, soberly. “She would have told my father, perhaps.”

A rap on the door interrupted the conversation at this point. It was Old P’lina who entered at Mr. Van Meter’s invitation of “Come in.”

Paulina stood unbendingly just inside the door. “I saw the woman Hepsy sent me to and she says that Vittoria was not there last night. Then I went to see Herman at the shop and he acted as though it was none of my business where Vittoria was. That was all.”

Without waiting for comment or question, Paulina turned and went away. Andy, looking at Jannet, smiled at her. “You can scarcely get used to our gentle P’lina, can you, Jannet?’

“She is certainly the most sudden person I ever saw!”

Mr. Van Meter did not smile. He sat in thought for a moment, then arose. “I shall see the young man himself. I want to talk to Vittoria and I do not propose to wait until she may have gone away. If she is going to marry Herman, he certainly will have some news of her soon.”

With this explanation, Mr. Van Meter left the room. Jannet remained, talking to her cousin till she heard Jan’s rapid footsteps in the hall. “He’s looking for me, I suspect, Cousin Andy,” she said, hurrying out. “Here I am, Jan, if you want to see me.”

“You are the very little Dutchwoman I’m looking for. Come on. I want to show you how I got into your room. I didn’t go that round-about way through the attic, nor up a ladder through a tool house! Our ancestor had one more way of getting in and out.”

“But it was so funny, Jan, that you should have come to that particular room on that particular night!”

“Not so very. I intended to stay all night with Chick and then changed my mind. But we fooled around, and I didn’t want to wake anybody up. So I opened the back door with a key I have and went to bed. Then I was too cold and I got up to prowl around after a blanket or something. There wasn’t a thing in the closet where Paulina keeps all the extra things, and I could get into your room, I knew, though it was always kept locked. I didn’t even try the door, but went in, without a light, fumbled around and finally drew off a comforter that was over the foot. I knew, you see, that you were expected, but I didn’t have the least idea that you were there. If I had happened to touch your face,—wow!”

“Was the bed kept made up, that you knew you would find something?”

“No, but I took a chance that it was made up for you. See?”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I didn’t know how you would take it till I got acquainted with you. Then, to tell the truth, I rather hated to do it.”

“You need not have hesitated. You needed that comforter and I had enough without it anyhow. But I surely did wonder about it, and with all the ghost stories and all, well, I haven’t known what to make of everything.”

The next few minutes were most engaging, for Jan showed his cousin how one portion of a panel apparently dropped down into the floor and made a low opening large enough for one person to enter from the hall into the room. “Mercy, Jan, I’ll never sleep in peace now, if there are two ways of getting in beside the door!”

“Put bolts on ’em, Jannet. I’ll fix it.”

“Ask Uncle Pieter first, Jan. Then I’ll be glad to have you do it. But I want it kept possible to open in this way. It’s so thrilling, you know.”

“Yes, isn’t it? But it is hard to forgive you, Jannet, for finding this out about the secret room first.”

“I only followed the ghost, Jan. But you don’t know how I wondered what the secret was that you had with Paulina, and oh, did you send a little message to your mother by Paulina that you were home?”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“Oh, I just remember that your mother read something and looked as cross as she ever looks and she was a little embarrassed, I thought, when she excused herself. And then you came just as if you had just arrived, and told me a whopper about coming from Chick’s!”

“That was no whopper. I had come. I rode over there early, but of course it wasn’t the first time I had come from there.”

The matter of his early appearance at this time had also to be explained, but Jan related how school was closing early and how he and Chick decided not to wait a minute after examinations if they could get permission to leave, from parents and school authorities. “Think of all that was going on at the farm and I missing it! Mother expected me this time, but I wrote her to let me surprise you.”

It occurred to Jannet that she had not had anything to eat, and she felt a little faint, to her own surprise. “What’s the matter, Jannet?” asked Jan, suddenly noticing how she looked.

“Why, I’m hungry, I believe. We had some cookies and fudge and lemonade last night but that isn’t very staying.”

“Haven’t you had any breakfast? Believe me, I never forget my meals. Come with me, child. If Daphne doesn’t fill you up with griddle-cakes, then my name is Mike!”

Laughing, but not so sorry for the stout young arm that led her along, Jannet willingly made the descent to the kitchen, where kind old Daphne fussed over her and stirred up a fresh supply of batter for her cakes. Jan, quite at home with the cook, made some cocoa, which might have been better had he followed Daphne’s directions; but the result was hot and stimulating at least. “Now you go and lie down somewhere, honey, and git some sleep,” said Daphne, who had heard what she was not supposed to hear from Hepsy, who at last understood the visit to her room in the “dead of night.”

Jannet needed no coaxing to take the advice thus offered. Well fortified and comfortable after her hot cakes, cocoa and real maple syrup, she was escorted to the library by Jan and tucked on the davenport there with a light cover suitable to the warm day. Jan thought that she would sleep better there than in her own room, all things considered, but Jannet knew that she could sleep anywhere. Jan drew the curtain with its fringes before the alcove in which the davenport stood. From little windows the soft breeze came in gently. Jannet never knew when Jan went away, so quickly did she sink into slumber.

It must have been in the late afternoon when she wakened. She had not known when Cousin Di and Jan came and looked at her, and debated whether to waken her for dinner or not, nor when Uncle Pieter came and looked down upon her with a smile. “Poor little Jannetje Jan,” he said, pulling the curtains together and going back to his desk to wait for some one.

It was when conversation was going on between her uncle and some one else that she wakened. “You can wait outside, Herman,” she heard her uncle say. “It will be better for Vittoria to talk to me alone, and I can assure you that she will receive every courtesy.”

Jannet felt very uncomfortable, though at first still drowsy. But after all, she was the one who made the first discovery. It was not eavesdropping, she hoped, and she could not help it, anyway. She almost drowsed off to sleep again in the first few minutes, while Vittoria was answering Mr. Van Meter’s questions about where she had been. Vittoria was decidedly sulky and did not want to answer any questions. Finally Mr. Van Meter told her that perfect frankness was her only course. “So far as I know, you have done no real harm in playing the ghost, but we want to know why you did it, and of course we want no more of it. It was most dangerous for the girls to be locked in and frightened.”

“You don’t intend to send me away, then, till I get married?”

“Not as long as you make no trouble for us. And we want no gossip about this, either, for our own sakes and that of you and Herman.”

This seemed to relieve Vittoria, who began to talk. “I did it first to get even with Paulina who scared me once. I told her that I did not believe in the family ghosts. She did, but since nothing happened, she made something happen and I caught her at it, hiding in the attic where I had my box with my savings in it. She was more scared than I was, for she really believes in ghosts.

“Then,—well, Mrs. Van Meter told me to make all the trouble I could for you, and she was the one that found that secret room and played ghost sometimes. She sent me back here.”

Vittoria paused, perhaps half afraid to go on, but her listener made no comment. “I did it once in a while, half for fun, too, to scare Hepsy and Paulina, but you never heard any of it, so why would your wife want me to do it? Then, when the girls were here, I didn’t want them snooping around where I had my box, so I concluded that I’d give them a good scare. I did, too, but Jannet almost caught me last night. And when Hepsy told me that she asked about what perfume I used, I knew that she knew. I went to a show with Herman first and I had some of Hepsy’s new perfume on my handkerchief and on my dress. I did not think of it when I slipped on the things I wore to scare them.

“I whipped around, ahead of Jannet, and went around through the attic again to get my things; and then I was going to stay all night in Jan’s room, but I heard them coming and went the other way, sticking the things under Jan’s bed. They found them, Paulina said. I went to stay all night with a girl I knew, not where I usually stay. That was all.”

“Paulina said that you went into the trunks to get your costume.”

“Perhaps she thought so; but I never opened a trunk. These things I found in a box that was tied up in paper and in the back part of the attic.”

“Very well, Vittoria. Have your box taken out of the attic and do not go there again, please. I would put my savings in the bank, or if you care to give them to me, I will put them in my safe. Now I want to ask you if you remember some incidents connected with my sister, Jannet’s mother.”

Jannet, behind the curtains, was thoroughly awake by this time and with half a mind to go out now, for perhaps she should not hear what was to follow. She sat up, but decided not to go out. Vittoria was in the mood to tell now. Her uncle’s voice was not unkind and she knew that Vittoria must be relieved to think that she need not lose her place and the money which she wanted to make.

“I have kept it in mind,” her uncle continued, “that you served my former wife very faithfully, even if mistakenly at times. She had trained you and had given you some education. It was to be expected that you should have a regard for her.” Then Jannet heard her uncle tell Vittoria the incident of the telegram and what Paulina had said.

Vittoria remembered the occasion. “Yes, I’ll tell you more, Mr. Van Meter,” she said excitedly. “I did not care very much for your wife when she stood over me and threatened me with all sorts of things if I did not tear up a letter that had come to you. ‘It is from his precious sister,’ she said, ‘and I shall say to my husband, if he asks, that I have not destroyed any of his mail.’ And the telegram was from her, too, and she begged you to help her find her husband and baby.”

There was silence for a little. Jannet heard her uncle’s slow tapping on his desk. Finally he said, “Do you remember anything else, Vittoria? Were there any other letters?”

“One little letter that I had to tear up for her. There may have been other telegrams, but I did not know about them if there were. She was watching for the mail in those days, or had me do it.”

“I see. Well, Vittoria, this is very valuable information to me. I can not feel very happy over what you did, Vittoria, but it would do no good now to punish you in any way, even if I could. You had part in what was a very dreadful thing.”

“Oh, yes, sir!” To Jannet’s surprise, she heard Vittoria sobbing a little. “I was only sixteen, but I knew better; but I thought since they all died, it did not make so much difference,—until she came.”

“It may have made the difference that we could have saved my sister, Vittoria, and that Jannet need not have been in a boarding school for years. But you are not so much to blame as the one who ordered you to do it. It must have been a shock to you when we discovered Jannet. Well, Vittoria, we can not help the past. We have all made mistakes. Try to be a good girl and a good wife to Herman. I will have some work for him when I build the new barn.”

“Oh, thank you, sir, I’ll—,” but Vittoria’s voice was tearful, and Jannet heard her uncle open and close the door. Vittoria had gone, too upset to say another word. She had come in sullen and hard, and left all touched and softened by Mr. Van Meter’s treatment of her.

Jannet was proud of her uncle, and when he immediately crossed the room and parted the curtains to see if she were awake, she looked lovingly up into his rather troubled eyes to tell him so. “O uncle, you were so good to Vittoria! I was afraid that I ought not to be here, but I was more afraid to come out.”

“I knew that you were there, my child, but I’d like to be alone now for a little while.”

Jannet clung to his arm a minute, then ran out and to her room to get some more of the attic dust off in her tub and make herself quite fresh for supper. Her previous toilet had been made quite hastily and superficially, she knew.

Hepsy waited upon them at supper, but Jannet knew that a chastened and more considerate Vittoria would be helping to-morrow. Cousin Diana and Jan had their turn at the portfolio and its messages after supper, when they all gathered for a while in the living room. Then a sober Uncle Pieter took them, to put them away in his desk, and they saw no more of him that evening.