The Boarded-Up House by C. Clyde Squires

Author:C. Clyde Squires [Augusta Huiell Seaman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications, Inc
Published: 2014-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

AN EXCITING DISCOVERY

THE autumn of that year ended, the winter months came and went with all their holiday festivities, and spring entered in her appointed time. The passing winter had been filled with such varied outside activities for the two girls, that there was little time to think of the Boarded-up House, and still less to do any further investigating within it. Added to that, the cold had been so constant and intense that it would have been unsafe to venture into the unlighted, unheated, and unventilated old mansion.

But, in spite of these things, its haunting story was never out of their minds for long, and they discussed and re-discussed it in many a spare hour when they crouched cozily by themselves over the open fire during that long winter. It was a wonderful and appealing secret that they somehow felt was all their own. It was better, more interesting than the most engrossing story they had ever read. And the fascination of it was that, though they now knew so much, they did not yet know all. The mystery of the locked room always confronted them, always lured them on!

Once, on a day that was unusually mild, they ventured into the old house for a few moments, and looked long and intently at the Lovely Lady over the library mantel, and at the two pretty children in the drawing-room.

“Yes, that is the boy,” said Cynthia. “You can see, even there, what a fine young fellow he must have made, with those big brown eyes and that curly golden hair. Oh, the poor mother!—How she must have grieved, all these years! You can see that she has never gotten over it, or she would have come back here sometime. I wonder if she is alive yet!”

In the library, Joyce picked up the paper that had been discovered through the help of Goliath, and looked it over curiously.

“Why in the world didn’t we read this paper when we found it I” she exclaimed disgustedly. “Just see here,—the big headlines,—Fort Sumter Surrenders. War Formally Declared. Troops Rushing To Washington! Why, Cynthia, it would surely have given us the clue!”

“I don’t think it would have,” declared Cynthia, sceptically. “I never would have connected anything in the paper with what happened here.”

“Sherlock Holmes would have,” mused Joyce. “Well, anyway, we got at the story in another fashion. But oh, Cynthia, will we ever know about the locked-up room?” As Cynthia could cast no further light on this vexed question, they were forced to drop it.

Then came spring, and the ancient cherry-trees in the enclosure back of the Boarded-up House blossomed anew. One brilliant Saturday morning early in May, the girls clambered through the fence with their books and fancy-work, to spend some of the shining hour under the white canopy of blossoms. They were reading aloud the “Sign of Four,” (they inclined much toward mystery and detective stories at this time) turn and turn about, while the one who did not have the book sewed or embroidered.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.