"Oh," interrupted Georgina, her eyes wide with interest. "Emmett's father has just been telling me about this very rifle. But I didn't dream it was the one I'd seen up in the attic here. He showed me the corner where Emmett stood it when he left for the wreck, and told what was to be done with it. 'Them were his last words,'" she added, quoting Mr. Potter.

She reached out her hand for the clumsy old firearm and almost dropped it, finding it so much heavier than she expected. She wanted to touch with her own fingers the weapon that had such an interesting history, and about which a hero had spoken his last words.

"The hammer's broken," continued Richard. "Whoever brought it home let it fall. It's all rusty, too, because it was up in the attic so many years and the roof leaked on it. But Uncle Darcy said lots of museums would be glad to have it because there aren't many of these old flint-locks left now. He's going to leave it to the Pilgrim museum up by the monument when he's dead and gone, but he wants to keep it as long as he lives because Danny set such store by it."

"There's some numbers or letters or something on it," announced Georgina, peering at a small bra.s.s plate on the stock. "I can't make them out. I tell you what let's do," she exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm. "Let's polish it up so's we can read them. Tippy uses vinegar and wood ashes for bra.s.s. I'll run get some."

Georgina was enough at home here to find what she wanted without asking, and as full of resources as Robinson Crusoe. She was back in a very few minutes with a shovel full of ashes from the kitchen stove, and an old can lid full of vinegar, drawn from a jug in the corner cupboard. With a sc.r.a.p of a rag dipped first in vinegar, then in ashes, she began scrubbing the bra.s.s plate diligently. It had corroded until there was an edge of green entirely around it.

"I love to take an old thing like this and scrub it till it shines like gold," she said, scouring away with such evident enjoyment of the job that Richard insisted on having a turn. She surrendered the rag grudgingly, but continued to direct operations.

"Now dip it in the ashes again. No, not that way, double the rag up and use more vinegar. Rub around that other corner a while. Here, let me show you."

She took the rifle away from him again and proceeded to ill.u.s.trate her advice. Suddenly she looked up, startled.

"I believe we've rubbed it loose. It moved a little to one side. See?"

He grabbed it back and examined it closely. "I bet it's meant to move,"

he said finally. "It looks like a lid, see! It slides sideways."

"Oh, I remember now," she cried, much excited. "That's the way Leather-Stocking's rifle was made. There was a hole in the stock with a bra.s.s plate over it, and he kept little pieces of oiled deer-skin inside of it to wrap bullets in before he loaded 'em in. I remember just as plain, the place in the story where he stopped to open it and take out a piece of oiled deer-skin when he started to load."

As she explained she s.n.a.t.c.hed the rifle back into her own hands once more, and pried at the bra.s.s plate until she broke the edge of her thumb nail. Then Richard took it, and with the aid of a rusty b.u.t.ton-hook which he happened to have in his pocket, having found it on the street that morning, he pushed the plate entirely back.

"There's something white inside!" he exclaimed.

Instantly two heads bent over with his in an attempt to see, for Captain Kidd's s.h.a.ggy hair was side by side with Georgina's curls, his curiosity as great as hers.

"Whatever's in there has been there an awful long time," said Richard as he poked at the contents with his b.u.t.ton-hook, "for Uncle Darcy said the rifle's never been used since it was brought back to him."

"And it's ten years come Michaelmas since Emmett was drowned," said Georgina, again quoting the old net-mender.

The piece of paper which they finally succeeded in drawing out had been folded many times and crumpled into a flat wad. Evidently the message on it had been scrawled hastily in pencil by someone little used to letter writing. It was written in an odd hand, and the united efforts of the two little readers could decipher only parts of it.

"I can read any kind of plain writing like they do in school," said Richard, "but not this sharp-cornered kind where the m's and u's are alike, and all the tails are pointed."

Slowly they puzzled out parts of it, halting long over some of the undecipherable words, but a few words here and there were all they could recognize. There were long stretches that had no meaning whatever for them. This much, however, they managed to spell out:

"Dan never took the money.... I did it.... He went away because he knew I did it and wouldn't tell.... Sorry.... Can't stand it any longer....

Put an end to it all...."

It was signed "Emmett Potter."

The two children looked at each other with puzzled eyes until into Georgina's came a sudden and startled understanding. s.n.a.t.c.hing up the paper she almost fell out of the swing and ran towards the house screaming:

"Uncle Darcy! Uncle Darcy! Look what we've found."

She tripped over a piece of loose carpet spread just inside the front door as a rug and fell full length, but too excited to know that she had skinned her elbow she scrambled up, still calling:

"Uncle Darcy, _Dan never took the money. It was Emmett Potter. He said so himself!_"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XII

A HARD PROMISE

A DOZEN times in Georgina's day-dreaming she had imagined this scene.

She had run to Uncle Darcy with the proof of Dan's innocence, heard his glad cry, seen his face fairly transfigured as he read the confession aloud. Now it was actually happening before her very eyes, but where was the scene of heavenly gladness that should have followed?

Belle, startled even more than he by Georgina's outcry, and quicker to act, read the message over his shoulder, recognized the handwriting and grasped the full significance of the situation before he reached the name at the end. For ten years three little notes in that same peculiar hand had lain in her box of keepsakes. There was no mistaking that signature. She had read it and cried over it so many times that now as it suddenly confronted her with its familiar twists and angles it was as startling as if Emmett's voice had called to her.

As Uncle Darcy looked up from the second reading, with a faltering exclamation of thanksgiving, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from his shaking hands and tore it in two. Then crumpling the pieces and flinging them from her, she seized him by the wrists.

"No, you're _not_ going to tell the whole world," she cried wildly, answering the announcement he made with the tears raining down his cheeks. "You're not going to tell anybody! Think of me! Think of Father Potter!"

She almost screamed her demand. He could hardly believe it was Belle, this frenzied girl, who, heretofore, had seemed the gentlest of souls.

He looked at her in a dazed way, so overwhelmed by the discovery that had just been made, that he failed to comprehend the reason for her white face and agonized eyes, till she threw up her arms crying:

"_Emmett_ a thief! G.o.d in heaven! It'll kill me!"

It was the sight of Georgina's shocked face with Richard's at the door, that made things clear to the old man. He waved them away, with hands which shook as if he had the palsy.

"Go on out, children, for a little while," he said gently, and closed the door in their faces.

Slowly they retreated to the swing, Georgina clasping the skinned elbow which had begun to smart. She climbed into one seat of the swing and Richard and Captain Kidd took the other. As they swung back and forth she demanded in a whisper:

"Why is it that grown people always shut children out of their secrets?

Seems as if we have a right to know what's the matter when _we_ found the paper."

Richard made no answer, for just then the sound of Belle's crying came out to them. The windows of the cottage were all open and the gra.s.s plot between the windows and the swing being a narrow one the closed door was of little avail. It was very still there in the shady dooryard, so still that they could hear old Yellownose purr, asleep on the cushion in the wooden arm-chair beside the swing. The broken sentences between the sobs were plainly audible. It seemed so terrible to hear a grown person cry, that Georgina felt as she did that morning long ago, when old Jeremy's teeth flew into the fire. Her confidence was shaken in the world. She felt there could be no abiding happiness in anything.

"She's begging him not to tell," whispered Richard.

"But I owe it to Danny," they heard Uncle Darcy say. And then, "Why should I spare Emmett's father? Emmett never spared me, he never spared Danny."

An indistinct murmur as if Belle's answer was m.u.f.fled in her handkerchief, then Uncle Darcy's voice again:

"It isn't fair that the town should go on counting him a hero and brand my boy as a coward, when it's Emmett who was the coward as well as the thief."

Again Belle's voice in a quick cry of pain, as sharp as if she had been struck. Then the sound of another door shutting, and when the voices began again it was evident they had withdrawn into the kitchen.

"They don't want Aunt Elspeth to hear," said Georgina.

"What's it all about?" asked Richard, much mystified.