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when the chorus of surprise and bewilderment and indignation had at last subsided, they fell to discussing in its every detail this new phase of the journal and its abrupt ending.

"i tell you," announced alexander, thumping a sofa-cushion to emphasize his remark, "something happened to that kid just as she got to the last,—something happened, sure as wash-day! and it wasn't anything pleasant, either! do you get me?"

"you must be right!" agreed corinne. "when you think of what was going to happen the next day, and the danger she was in, and the fact that this journal is torn in two, and all that, i'm positive something terrible must have taken place just then. poor little alison! how are we ever going to know what163 it was, or whether she ever got out of it all right and got back home! if the end of the other half of the journal was maddening, this is about forty-five times worse! i feel as if i'd go absolutely crazy if this mystery isn't cleared up!"

"there's one thing you must remember," suggested the practical bess. "history tells us that the poison plot was discovered in time and didn't do washington any harm; and that ph?be fraunces gave him the warning, and he just cleared up the whole thing, and hanged the worst one of the conspirators,—whoever he might be! now, if that's the case, don't you think we could take it for granted that alison's affairs turned out all right, too?"

"not necessarily!" retorted corinne. "remember, also, that washington didn't know anything about her, and that that horrid steward had been watching her and plotting about her; and so had corbie, too. who knows but what they took her and carried her off before the thing was to take place, in order to have her out of the way!"

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"and there's another thing," added margaret. "do you remember what i told you mother said about that trunk of hers? it was found floating around in an old wreck. now how did it get there? if there was a wreck and she was on it, she was probably drowned and never got back to bermuda alive. but how did she come to be on a vessel with her trunk if she had been captured by the steward? did he put her there?"

"maybe she wasn't on that vessel at all!" was the contribution jess made to the problem. "somebody else may have taken possession of her trunk for all you can tell. a trunk is something anybody can use!"

"but did you ever hear of such a maddening thing as that journal breaking off just the minute she was going to tell where she'd hidden the signet!" exclaimed corinne in thorough exasperation. "why couldn't it have gone on just a second longer—at least till she'd had time for a tiny hint! and, see here! do you realize that she was actually talking to us (though she didn't know it) when she begs the165 person who finds and deciphers this journal in the future to find the signet and return it to her people?"

"why, that's so!" cried margaret in a tone of hushed awe. "it didn't strike me at first. she's actually speaking to us—for we must be the first ones who have read this journal! isn't it amazing!"

"you don't know whether we are or not," contradicted bess, with her usual cold common sense. "lots of people may have seen it before we did, and found the signet, too."

"i don't think it's likely," argued corinne, coming to margaret's defense. "and besides, how could they find the signet when she didn't even have a chance to tell where it was! no, i feel quite sure we're the first; but how are we ever going to know where she hid it? and even if we did know, would we be able to find it after the changes that have come in all these years?"

"then too," put in jess, "there's a chance that alison got out of the trouble all right, anyhow, and took the signet back to her grandfather166 herself. how are you going to tell?"

"there's one thing you all seem to have forgotten," suggested alexander. "and it's the biggest boost of the whole outfit! we are wise to her last name—trenham. now you, corinne,—you've been down there to that little old joint, bermuda. did you ever hear of any one by the name of trenham?"

"no, i didn't. of course, i never inquired particularly, not knowing anything about this, then. but i never heard that name. there's a very common one on the island that's a good deal like it—trimmingham—but that doesn't help much. it probably isn't the same, though the english do have the funniest way of shortening their names and pronouncing them in queer ways!"

"wrong trail!" exclaimed alexander, briefly. then, suddenly turning to margaret, he added:

"here, kiddie! hand me that journal-thing you've doped out. i want to give it the once-over!" he studied it thoughtfully for several minutes, tugging viciously the while at167 a long lock of red hair that always hung over his eyes. the rest all kept very quiet, watching him expectantly. presently he issued his ultimatum:

"there's one other piece of business that you all seem to have pretty well given the cold shoulder—this song and dance about some plot in bermuda that the alison kid says she was mixed up in. have you ever thought of doping that out?"

"no, we haven't," admitted corinne. "i did think once of hunting it up, but the whole thing was so awfully vague that there didn't seem to be any use. what could you hunt up, anyway? you'd have to read up a lot of bermuda history, and even then you probably wouldn't strike a thing that had any bearing on it!"

"you never can tell!" remarked the boy, wisely. "me for this job, from now on! where's that library joint you get all your books from, corinne? little alexander's going to join the army of high-brows!"

"you can take my card and use it, alexander,168 or i'll get you the books myself," corinne kindly offered.

"thanks awfully, but nothing doing!" he returned. "this kid gets right on the job himself when he strikes the trail. all i want to know is how you break into the place. if you put me wise to that, yours truly will do the rest!"

in the course of the next few days, alexander became a duly enrolled member of the nearest public library, and his family was edified to behold him deeply immersed in the most unusual occupation of literary and historical research. as he ordinarily touched no volume of any nature except his school-books (and these only under severe compulsion!), the spectacle was all the more amazing. baseball and other absorbing occupations of his street life were temporarily forgotten. he would lie for hours flat on his stomach on the couch, his heels in the air, pushing back his rebellious lock of hair, and mulling over the various odd volumes he had brought home from the library.169 at intervals he could be heard ejaculating: "gee!" "hot stuff!" and remarks of a similar nature.

but of his discoveries, if indeed he had made any, he would have nothing to say, conceding only that, when he had found anything of interest, a meeting of the antiquarian club should be called, and he would then make his disclosures in proper business form. this was absolutely all they could draw from him. the twins reported to corinne at school that alexander was certainly doing (for him!) a remarkable amount of reading; and it was not all about bermuda, either, as they had discovered from the titles of his books. american history also figured in his list, and other volumes whose bearing on the subject they could not even guess. they also expressed their wonder at the curious change they had noticed in his manner toward them.

"oh, alexander's all right!" corinne assured them. "you've always misjudged that little fellow, girls! he's got heaps of good in him! of course, he's a little rough and170 slangy, and a terrible tease, but most boys are, at his age; and some are lots worse. he's a gentleman at heart, though. you can tell that by the way he treats margaret. he's always just as gentle with her! but you've never taken him right. you get awfully annoyed when he teases you, and that's just exactly what he wants; it tickles him to pieces to see you get mad! if you'd only take him up good-naturedly and give him as good as he gives you, you'd find yourselves getting along heaps better!"

"that's exactly what you do, i guess!" remarked bess, ruefully. "and i can see that he thinks you're fine. he said the other night that you were 'some good sport,' and that's praise—from him! i'm going to try and act differently toward him from now on. but, oh! his language is so dreadful and slangy! it irritates me to pieces, and i just can't help snapping at him when he talks that way!"

"do you know," said corinne, "i've noticed a queer thing about him. when he's very much in earnest and forgets himself completely,171 especially in this mystery business, he hardly uses any slang at all,—just talks like any one else! i believe he'll grow out of all that, later, when he's learned that it isn't the way the worth-while people talk. but he's bright—bright as a steel trap; and think where we should have been in this affair if it hadn't been for him!"

meanwhile, all unconscious that he was a subject of such animated discussion, alexander was pursuing his researches in grim earnest; and at length, in the course of a week or so, he announced that a meeting might be called and he would make his report. when they had gathered expectantly the following afternoon, he came in with an armful of books and settled down on the floor before the open fire.

"now, don't go boosting your hopes sky-high!" he remarked, noting the tense expectancy of their attitudes. "i ain't doped out anything so very wonderful—"

"oh, haven't you, alexander?" exclaimed margaret, disappointedly. "i thought you must have found something great, the way172 you've been grunting and chuckling and talking to yourself all this time when you read in the evenings!"

"sorry to give you the cold shower, kiddie! i've done the best i could; and if i was chuckling and grunting, it was because i'd struck some ripping hot stuff in the way of adventures. say! that bermuda history is some little jig-time! i started to wade through it, thinking it'd be as dry as tinder, and you can knock me down with a plate of pancakes, but it was rich! started right in with the greatest old shipwreck, when old admiral somers and his men got chucked off on this uninhabited island! gee! it was as good as 'robinson crusoe,' that we're reading about in school. then they had a rip-snorting old mutiny, and started in to build another ship, and all that sort of thing! and later on, after they'd gone home to england and come back and settled in a colony there, they started up some witchcraft, and ducked a lot of gabby dames and hung some more, and—"

"but, alexander," interrupted the impatient173 margaret, "you can tell us all about that some other time. what i want to know is, did you find out anything that seemed to be connected with our mystery?"

"that's right, kid! we'll get down to business, and do our spieling afterward. well, i didn't strike a blooming thing that seemed to be even a forty-second cousin to our affairs till i got down to the year 1775; and then i hit the trail of a piker called governor bruère, who was the reigning high mogul in bermuda just then. he was some pill, too, you can take it from me! and everybody seemed to hate him like poison, he was such a grouch. well, it was just about the time when the revolution busted out in the u. s. washington was up there around boston, keeping the british on the jump. but he was scared stiff, because gunpowder was so short. there were only about nine rounds left for each american soldier. but they were chucking a good bluff, and of course the british weren't wise to it.

"just about then, somebody put washington174 on to the fact that down in bermuda there was a whole mint of gunpowder concealed somewhere in the government grounds, and it wouldn't be so hard to get hold of it. at the same time, too, the bermudians were pretty nearly starving, because they got all their food supplies from america, and since the war broke out, england had cut them off at the meter. so washington doped it out that here was a good chance to make an exchange. he sent a couple of fellers to tell the bermudians that, if they'd give him that powder, he'd send them a whole outfit of eats. and you'll admit that was square enough!

"but wouldn't this jar you! when they got there, they found the whole place up in the air and the governor sizzling around like a cannon-cracker, because some one had got in ahead of them, stole the powder, and carted it off to america! they just turned tail and beat it for home and mother as quick as they could, before the governor got wind of their business! so long as washington got the powder, they should worry!

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"but the how of it was like this: a fellow named captain ord,—or some say it was one called george tucker, but most think it was ord,—had it all fixed up with some bermudian friends that he should get the powder on the q. t., load it on board his ship, and beat it while the going was good. the powder-magazine was in the government grounds at a dump called st. george's, and governor bruère always slept with the keys under his pillow. well, some smooth guy managed to swipe those keys one dark night, and they rolled down no end of barrels to a place called tobacco rocks, loaded 'em on whale-boats, and rowed out with 'em to the ship that was anchored off mangrove bay, wherever that may be, and captain ord was off with it before morning. well, you can take it from me that, when bruère got wise to what had happened, he went up in the air! he was a hot sketch, and he made it warm for the bermudians; but it didn't do any good, as nobody knew much about the business—or if they did, they wouldn't tell!

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"anyhow, washington got his powder, and it's on record that afterward he sent a heap of swell eats down to pay for it! gee! wouldn't i like to have been in on that fun though—the night they swiped the loot!"

"but, alexander, i don't see what all this has got to do with alison!" cried margaret. "there's nothing in it about a girl, or the least thing that concerns her!"

"that's just where i knew you'd throw me down!" remarked alexander. "i told you to begin with that i hadn't found anything positive about it, didn't i? well, this is the only thing that even passed it on the other side of the gangway! that alison kid keeps talking about a plot in bermuda and something that happened that the government didn't cotton to, and there isn't another blooming hook to hang your hat on but that, unless it's something that isn't spoken of or known about in history. then there's one other reason. she speaks of some one called h., and his uncle, and his uncle's ship, and how they were afraid to go back to bermuda because one of the177 sailors had turned piker and given way on them. of course, it's all guesswork! and what in thunder a kid like alison could have to do with such a piece of work, beats me! but there you are! i'm done!"

there was considerable disappointment in the antiquarian club, when alexander had ceased, that nothing more definite had been unearthed by him. it seemed highly unlikely to them all that this strange little historical incident could have any bearing on the affairs of the mysterious "lass" whose secret they had stumbled upon. none but himself appeared to put any faith in the connection between the two, and they discussed it for a time hotly. at last corinne, perceiving that alexander was becoming piqued that his efforts were not more appreciated, declared:

"i think you've done splendidly, alec, in discovering anything at all, among such a lot of uncertain stuff; and perhaps we'll come across something later that will make us sure. but you seem to have been reading quite a pile of books. are they all about bermuda?"

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"nope! not on your tintype! there are precious few about bermuda alone, anyway. so after i'd chewed up what there was, i took to doping out american history, and i came across some hot stuff there, too! the main guy over there in the library advised me to read washington irving's 'life of george washington' when i told her i was tracking down american history. and say, that's going some, too—in spots! i fell over something last night that'll make you all put on the glad smile—i found out the name of the feller that was soft on ph?be!"

"oh, what is it?" they shouted in a satisfying chorus.

"thomas hickey!" announced alexander, proudly.

"but how do you know?"

"'cause that's the name of the feller washington hung! it was a member of his life-guard who was one of the conspirators!"

"alexander, you're some trump!" declared corinne. "in all my browsing, i never came across that!"