the family moved into the new house about the first of october. it was the first time that mark and marjorie had ever moved and the event was full of novelty. the new house was a big one in the country and the two found much to explore in the first weeks of arrival.
mark was always romancing. he believed, maybe, if he were to hunt long enough, he might find something interesting that had been left by former tenants. he was sure that there were secret drawers in the old desk that was in the barn and he spent hours trying to find them. then, too, he went about tapping the walls of the house to see if they emitted a hollow sound. he was sure, he said, that there must be secret panels with things hidden behind them.
marjorie only laughed at mark’s romancing.[pg 160] she half believed in it. it was fun, anyway. so she followed mark’s tapping and listened to the knocks. one day when the paperers were busy, mark went into a store-closet that adjoined the room and somehow he did find a place that was hollow. it was back of a board shelf in the closet and, when opened, was quite a hiding place. there was nothing in it. marjorie insisted that it was where the gas pipes had been before electricity was installed. but mark called it triumphantly the secret panel. he talked a great deal about it and showed it to the neighbor’s children, eleanore and mabel and richard. he even persuaded mother to hide some silver in the place for safe keeping. and she did it, she said, laughingly, to please him.
one might have thought that mark would stop romancing, after having discovered a secret panel, but he didn’t rest satisfied. having read a story about two boys who found a lost will in a trunk in an old attic, mark became interested in the possibilities of their newly acquired one. there were three rooms up there, two of them used to store the family’s trunks. the third room mark[pg 161] appropriated and made into what he called his “den.”
the “den” had an old matting upon its floor. the matting had been there when mark and marjorie moved into the new home. mark always accepted it and had never found any romantic suggestions coming from that source till one night, richard having been allowed to spend a night with him, they carried a mattress up there and slept on the floor, “for fun,” they said. mark had a lantern and they talked till nearly two o’clock telling stories to each other. it was really great fun. mark’s stories were full of adventure—some of them even were creepy, as it was nearing hallowe’en day by day. and what was more fitting than right in the middle of mark’s last thriller, there should be a strange rattle and a clinking noise! it made mark hush and it made richard jump. they looked at each other in frightened silence for a minute.
“what was it?” asked mark, as soon as he could breathe again calmly.
“oh, a mouse, i guess,” returned richard.
“a mouse, forsooth! nay!” returned[pg 162] mark, talking in a romantic way. “me-thinks it is a strange noise, friend. it cometh from under this matting. i will take up the matting and if need be the floor and we shall see—” here he pulled up an end of old matting.
richard was willing to have another of mark’s adventures, so he helped. it wasn’t hard to get it up—but when it was once up the most astonishing thing came to light. even richard was amazed. as for mark, he was in his element of discovery. there upon the floor was a big round circle. the floor was painted but the circle was not!
“what is it?” inquired richard.
mark debated. “i don’t know,” he mused. “it’s evidently something!” he measured the circle. it was about three feet in diameter. he was for tearing up the flooring at once, only richard reminded him that it would make a dreadful noise and wake everybody in the house up. surely a fortune and a lost will must be under it! richard silenced mark’s objection to waiting till daylight and after school by saying that they would never be[pg 163] allowed to sleep in the attic on a mattress again, if the two of them got into trouble. that was true. so they sat up, wrapped in blankets, listening for the sound that seemed to have gone away and also for other sounds that did not come. and they wondered excitedly how a circle like that should come to be upon an attic floor, if not purposely put there to mark something. richard suggested that it might be an old astrologer’s room and that the circle was one upon which he might have cast horoscopes. that sounded rather fascinating but neither mark nor richard knew anything about astrologers or even what they did when they cast horoscopes. so this was rather romantic and they talked a great deal about it, once in a while switching off to goblins and hallowe’en. mark and richard discussed, among other topics, what they should do to make hallowe’en truly exciting. they were going to dress up like witches and go to call upon some friends. richard was planning to carry his black cat in a bag and they were going to wear masks. probably marjorie would beg to go too—girls always[pg 164] did want to go too—and they’d let her into the secret about the circle on the attic floor too, wouldn’t they?
richard assented. he and marjorie were good friends.
“i tell you what!” exclaimed mark, suddenly. “after we’re dressed up, we’ll all come up here early in the evening. maybe mother and daddy’ll have gone to the pictures. then we’ll take up the floor and see what’s under the circle!” it seemed a thing quite fit for the night of hallowe’en.
having decided this, they again unrolled the mattress, hid themselves in blankets and snored peacefully till dawn.
in the morning, mark put the matting over the very precious circle and the two went downstairs hinting at wonderful secrets of things they had found and strange noises they had heard. marjorie said it seemed to her that she had heard a queer noise too—up overhead. she said it sounded like mark tapping for secret panels. then everybody laughed because of the memory of how mark was shut up tight in the harness-closet once upon a time, a victim of his love of mystery and[pg 165] adventure. then richard said he thought mark had heard a mouse.
“mouse! does a mouse rattle?” inquired mark. “i guess you’ll find out!” and the subject strung itself out all through the day and on till hallowe’en time came. of course, in between, mark had visited the attic and everybody had seen the circle. everybody declared that it was a mystery. nobody had ever seen anything like it upon an attic floor. mother laughed. she was used to mark’s imaginings. she said she didn’t connect it with a little harmless mouse gnawing at a hole.
at the mention of a mouse gnawing, mark became almost dramatic. “it was no mouse!” he declared. “don’t i know what a mouse sounds like!”
hallowe’en came, but even the fun of dressing up like witches lost the usual flavor. mark, marjorie and richard were worked up to a pitch of excitement over the circle on the attic floor. they talked of nothing else. mark had read up on astrology in the encyclopedia. he hadn’t understood it all but he talked as if he did and marjorie was wonderingly proud of his knowledge, while richard[pg 166] was willing to listen, though he corrected mark’s statements now and then, having read up on the subject at the library himself.
it was lucky that the picture theatre claimed mother and daddy that night. and the strange thing was that neither mark nor marjorie had begged to be taken too. they had come in at eight o’clock sharp, according to directions that mother had insisted upon. they kept on their weird garments of sheets and shawls. mark, lantern in hand, led the way to the dark attic room and the others followed.
then there began to be a real noise in that room as mark hammered a chisel into the flooring. it seemed to be a very thick board flooring and it took time to get some nails out. but they yielded finally, and the end of one floor-board that crossed the circle at its centre grew loose enough to be pried up. (mark had insisted that he choose the centre of the circle. nobody knew why, though they trusted him. he said that the centre was the middle of a thing and that whatever was there would be exactly under it. this sounded plausible.)
[pg 167]then mark had richard take the chisel and wedge up the board a bit. it wouldn’t give very much, you know. he said marjorie might hold the lantern and he’d peep into the darkness underneath and see what was there. really, the moment was very exciting. nobody knew what mark might see—they felt that he was brave to take the first look, for it might be ’most anything down there where mark’s noise had come from!
they were silent while mark, lying flat down on the attic floor, peered under the lifted end of the board. “i see gold pieces,” he gasped. “say, give me more light—it must be buried treasure! didn’t i say i’d find it!”
marjorie and richard looked at each other. was it true? “let us see,” they urged. richard did peek. he said he couldn’t see very clearly but that there was something there that he thought looked like money. it was round and there was something that looked like a bag there—maybe a money bag! marjorie was so excited that she couldn’t keep still long enough to see anything at all well. but she thought she saw something that looked like a piece of paper. nobody else had seen that, so they all[pg 168] peeped again. “it is a lost will,” declared mark. and they believed him.
then they fell to opening the flooring in a most reckless way. it really was dreadful—but when one is expecting to get at a money bag and a lost will, one does not stop to consider the flooring. the board was whacked beyond recognition. the hammer and chisel fell to work and the flooring yielded to the onslaught. then—mark lifted the board! ah!—ah-ha!—
richard held the lantern down so that it shone full upon the treasure; marjorie gasped; mark bent forward to see all there was to see. there was a pile of broken glass and some rags, corks—and buttons! oh, yes, and there was a piece or so of white paper—not very large. the buttons were of metal, round brass buttons, tarnished and old. the paper was old white paper, yellow now. it was not a lost will at all! no, the money bag was just a round wad of cloth and mark’s noise was—mark’s noise was evidently a rat running around the rat’s nest that they had found! alas, alas! there was no more mystery! the three had never seen a rat’s nest[pg 169] before but richard had heard about them. he said, from the first, he’d said it was a mouse—but everybody knows that a mouse is very different from a rat!
after they had all recovered from the shock of their disappointment, they laughed a little. it really was funny—there they had been planning what they would do with all the money after it had been properly divided! of course, the lost will would have given the money to the finders, you know.
mark fingered the buttons, grimy with much dust. “they don’t make buttons like this any more,” he said. “they are very interesting. i am glad i found them.” he said that they had not yet come to the end of the mystery. “why is there a circle on the attic floor?” he questioned. “why?”
nobody could say. then they heard mother’s voice downstairs. “you’ll have to tell about the floor,” marjorie suggested. “we can never get it down again.”
so they did. it was a sorry group that said good-night, even after they had been forgiven.
next day when mark returned from school,[pg 170] he heard the carpenter repairing the damaged floor up in his den and he rushed up there.
“say,” he said, “what do you suppose anybody ever made a circle on the floor like that for unless it was an astrologer?”
the carpenter laughed. “sonny,” he smiled. “i’ve been in this house when there was a big cistern right here—know what a cistern is? it’s what the family used to depend upon for water in the house. when they took it down, the floor that was painted all around it showed the circle where the cistern had stood. that’s all. it wasn’t any astrologer that made it.”
after that, somehow, the news about the cistern’s having been mark’s mysterious circle in dim ages past, leaked out. richard and marjorie and mabel and eleanore plagued him forever after—but, anyway, mark says, some day when he does find a fortune and a lost will, they’ll stop laughing at him. maybe that’s true.
ermelinda’s family
the november surprise
november’s first surprise pocket was another strange mystery. dotty always chuckled when marjorie asked her to tell what it was. “i can’t,” she laughed. “it’s a joke!” so poor marjorie had to quiet her curiosity and wait till the very day before thanksgiving. then she ripped open the surprise book’s surprise and undid the paper that she found wrapped around that queer lumpy-bumpy-feeling thing. you couldn’t guess what dotty had put in—it was a wish-bone. “good wishes for a fine thanksgiving dinner,” it send. as for the story, that was dated to read on the evening before thanksgiving. it was called “ermelinda’s family,” and it was a thanksgiving story.
