  Miss Moore did not awaken, apparently, until midmorning and the girls did not want to go away until they had served her breakfast. They had been to her door several times and to all appearances the elderly woman had been asleep. When, at length, Miss Moore did awaken, she complained of having been disturbed by noises in the night. “Why did you girls tiptoe around the living-room just before daybreak?” “Why, we didn’t, Aunt Jane! Truly we didn’t,” Dories replied. She did not like to tell that it would have been a physical impossibility for them to have done so, as they were crouched behind “cabin seven” at that hour watching “cabin eight.” The old woman looked at the speaker sharply, then continued: “I called your name and for a time the tiptoeing stopped. Then, when I pretended to be asleep, it began again. I was sure that under the crack of the door I could see a fire burning as though you had lighted wood on the grate.” “Oh, no, Miss Moore, we didn’t, I assure you,” Nann exclaimed. “There wasn’t any wood on it. We swept it clean yesterday afternoon.” A cry from Dories caused the speaker to pause and turn toward her. She was pointing at the fireplace. There was a small charred pile in the center of the grate. The old woman’s thoughts had evidently changed their direction for she asked, querulously, if they were going to keep her waiting all the morning for her breakfast. While out in the kitchen preparing it, Dories whispered, her eyes wide, “Nann, what do you make of it all? You are smiling to yourself as if you had solved the mystery.” “I believe I have, one of them; but, Dori, please don’t ask me to explain until I catch the ghost red-handed, so to speak.” “White-handed, shouldn’t it be?” Dories inquired, her fears lessened by Nann’s evident delight in something she believed she had discovered. When Miss Moore’s breakfast had been served, the girls, wishing to tidy up the cabin, set to work with a will. Nann was sweeping the porch and Dories was dusting and straightening the living-room when a queer humming noise was heard in the distance. “Dori,” Nann called, “come out here a moment. Can’t you hear a strange buzzing noise? It sounds as though it were high up in the air. What can it be?” The other girl appeared in the open doorway and they both listened intently. “Maybe it’s a flock of geese going south for the winter,” Dories ventured, but her friend shook her head. “That noise is coming nearer. Not going farther away,” she said. The buzzing and whizzing sounds increased with great rapidity. Springing down the steps, Nann exclaimed, “Whatever is making that commotion, is now right over our heads.” Dories bounded to her friend’s side and they both gazed into the gleaming blue sky with shaded eyes. “There it is!” Nann cried excitedly. “Why, of course, it’s an airplane! We should have guessed that right away. I wonder where it is going to land. There’s nothing but marsh and water around here besides this narrow strip of beach.” “Oh, look! look!” This from Dories. “It’s dropping right down into the ocean and so it must be one of those combination air and sea planes.” “Unless it has broken a wing and is falling,” Nann suggested. The airplane, nose downward, had seemed verily to plunge into the sea. “Let’s run to the Point o’ Rocks.” Dories started as she spoke and Nann, throwing down the broom, raced after her. It was hard to go very rapidly where the sand was deep and dry, and so by the time they had climbed up on the highest boulder out on the rocky point, there was no sign whatever of the airplane either sailing safely on the water nor lying on the shore disabled. “Hmm! That certainly is puzzling,” Nann said as she half closed her eyes in meditative thought. “Now, where can that huge thing have gone that it has disappeared so entirely?” “I can’t imagine,” Dories replied. “If only Gibralter were here with his punt, we might be able to find out.” Then she exclaimed merrily, “Nann, there is another mystery added to the twenty and nine that we already have.” “Not quite that many,” the other maid replied, giving one last long look in the direction they believed the plane had descended or fallen. “I’m inclined to think,” she ventured, “that there is a bay or something beyond the swamp. O, well, let’s go back to our task. It’s lunch time, if nothing else.” They decided, as the day was unusually warm for that time of the year, to eat a cold lunch, and, as their aunt did not wish anything then, the girls decided to walk along the beach in the opposite direction and see if they could find the cove where Gib kept his punt in hiding. But, just as they reached the spot where the road from town ended at the beach, they heard a merry hallooing, and, turning, they beheld Gibralter Strait riding the white horse that was usually hitched to the coach. “Oh, good, good!” was Dories’ delighted exclamation. “Now perhaps we will find out about the plane. Of course the people in town saw it and Gib may know——” She stopped talking to stare at the approaching steed and rider in wide-eyed amazement. “How queer!” she ejaculated. “Nann, am I seeing double? I’m sure that I see four legs and Gib certainly has only two.” There were undeniably four long, slim legs, two on either side of the big white horse, but the mystery was quickly explained by the appearance, over Gib’s shoulder, of a head belonging to another boy. “Nann Sibbett!” Dories whirled, the light of inspiration in her eyes, “I do believe that other boy is Dick Burton, of whom Gib has so often spoken.” And Dories was right. Gib waved his cap, then leaped to the sand, closely followed by the newcomer. One glance at the young stranger assured the girls that he was a city lad. His merry brown eyes twinkled when Gibralter introduced him merely as the “kid that was crazy to find a way into the old ruin.” The city boy took off his cap in a manner most polite, adding, “By name, Richard Ralston Burton, but I’m usually called Dick.” Nann, realizing that Gib hadn’t the remotest idea how to introduce his friend to them, then told the lad their names, adding, “Oh, Gib, you just can’t guess how glad we are that you have come at last. The mysteries are heaping up so high and fast that we simply must solve a few of them.” But it was quite evident that the boys were equally excited about the airplane, which they, too, had seen as they were riding on the white horse along the road in the swamps. “I say,” Gib began at once, “did yo’uns see where that airplane fellow dove to? D’you ’spose he’s smashed all to smithereens on the rocks over yonder?” The girls shook their heads. “No,” Dories replied, “we just came from there and there wasn’t a sign of that airplane. We thought that at least we would see the wreck of it.” “It must o’ landed round the curve whar the swamp comes down to the shore,” Gib said. “Come on, old man, let’s investigate.” Then Dick smiled directly at Nann as he added, “We won’t be gone long.” |
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