Doris drew her into her own room and shut the door. The communicating door to her mother's room was also shut, so they were quite alone. When Sally was seated, Doris laid a bulky bundle in her lap.

"What is it?" queried Sally, wide-eyed, wondering what all this could have to do with their mystery.

"I'll tell you," said Doris. "If it hadn't been for this awful storm, I'd have told you and asked you about it next morning, but I didn't want to over the 'phone. So I just took things in my own hands, and here's the result." Sally was more bewildered than ever.

"What's the result?"

"Why, just this," went on Doris. "That night, after we'd been to Slipper Point, I lay awake again the longest time, thinking and thinking. And suddenly a bright idea occurred to me. You know, whenever I'm worried or troubled or puzzled, I always go to Father and ask his advice. I can go to Mother too, but she's so often ill and miserable, and I've got into the habit of not bothering her with things. But Father's always ready, and he's never failed me yet. So I got to wondering how I could get some help from him in this affair without, of course, his suspecting anything about the secret part of it. And then, all of a sudden, I thought of--_books_! There must be _some_ books that would help us,--books that would give us some kind of information that might lead to a clue.

"So next morning, very first thing, I sent a special delivery letter to Father asking him to send me down _at once_ any books he could find about _pirates_ and such things. And, bless his heart, he sent me down a whole bundle of them that just got here this morning!"

Sally eyed them in a sort of daze. "But--but won't your father guess just what we're up to?" she ventured, dubiously. "He will ask you what you want them for, won't he?"

"No, indeed," cried Doris. "That's just the beauty of Father. He'd never ask me _why_ I want them in a hundred years. If I choose to explain to him, all right, and if I don't he knows that's all right too, for he trusts me absolutely, not to do anything wrong. So, when he comes down, as I expect he will in a week or so, he'll probably say, 'Pirates all right, daughter?' and that's all there'll be to it." Sally was at last convinced, though she marvelled inwardly at this quite wonderful species of father.

"But now, let's look at the books," went on Doris. "I'm perfectly certain we'll find something in them that's going to give us a lift."

She unwrapped the bundle and produced three volumes. One, a very large one, was called "The Book of Buried Treasure." Another, "Pirates and Buccaneers of Our Own Coasts," and, last but not least, "The Life of Captain Kidd." Sally's eyes fairly sparkled, especially at the last, and they hurriedly consulted together as to who should take which books first. At length it was decided that Sally take the "Buried Treasure Book," as it was very bulky, and Doris would go over the other two. Then they would exchange. This ought to keep them fully occupied till fair weather set in again, after which, armed with so much valuable information, they would again tackle their problem on its own ground--at Slipper Point.

It was two days later when they met again. There had not been an opportunity to exchange the books, but on the first fair morning Sally and Genevieve rowed up in "45," and Doris leaped in exclaiming:

"Let's go right up to Slipper Point. I believe I've got on the track of something--at last! What have you discovered, Sally?"

"Nothing at all,--just nothing," declared Sally rather discouragingly.

"It was an awfully interesting book, though. I just devoured it. But it didn't tell a thing that would help us out. And I've made up my mind, since reading it, that we might as well give up any idea of Captain Kidd having buried anything around here. That book said he never buried a thing, except one place on Long Island, and that was all raked up long ago. All the rest about him is just silly nonsense and talk. He never _was_ much of a pirate, anyway!"

"Yes, I discovered the same thing in the book I had about him," agreed Doris. "We'll have to give up Captain Kidd, but there were some pirates who did bury somewhere, and one I discovered about did a lot of work right around these sh.o.r.es."

"He _did_?" cried Sally, almost losing her oars in her excitement. "Who was he? Tell me--quick!"

"His name was Richard Worley," answered Doris. "He was a pirate about the year 1718, the same time that Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were 'pirating' too."

"Yes, I know about them," commented Sally. "I read of them in that book.

But it didn't say anything about Worley."

"Well, he was only a pirate for six weeks before he was captured," went on Doris, "but in that time he managed to do a lot, and it was all along the coast of New Jersey here. Now why isn't it quite possible that he sailed in here with his loot and made that nice little cave and buried his treasure, intending to come back some time. He was captured finally down off the coast of the Carolinas, but he might easily have disposed of his booty here before that."

Sally was filled with elated certainty. "It surely must have been he!"

she cried. "For there was some one,--that's certain, or there wouldn't have been so much talk about buried treasure. And he's the likeliest person to have made that cave."

"There's just one drawback that I can see," Doris reminded her. "It was an awfully long time ago,--1718, nearly two hundred years. Do you think it would all have lasted so long? The wood and all, I mean?"

"That cedar wood lasts forever," declared Sally. "He probably wrecked some vessel and then took the wood and built this cave with it. Probably he built it because he thought it would be a good place to hide in some time, if they got to chasing him. No one in all the world would ever find him there."

"That's a good idea!" commented Doris. "I'd been wondering why a pirate should take such trouble to fix up a place like that. They usually just dug a hole and put in the treasure and then killed one of their own number and buried his body on top of it. I hope to goodness that Mr.

Richard Worley didn't do that pleasant little trick! When we find the treasure, we don't want any skeletons mixed up with it."

They both laughed heartily over the conceit, and rowed with increased vigor as Slipper Point came in sight.

"You said you had an idea about that queer paper we found, too," Sally reminded her. "What was it?"

"Oh, I don't know whether it amounts to much, and I'll try to explain it later. The first thing to do is to try to discover, if we can, some idea of a date, or something connected with this cave, so that we can see if we are on the right track. I've been thinking that if that wood was from an old, wrecked vessel, we might perhaps find something on it somewhere that would give us a clue."

"That's so," said Sally. "I hadn't thought of that before."

With this in mind, they entered the cave, lit the candle, seated Genevieve on the chair with a bag of candy in her lap for solace, and proceeded to their task.

"The only way to find anything is just to sc.r.a.pe off all we can of this mold," announced Sally. "You take one side, and I'll take the other and we'll use these sticks. It won't be an easy job."

It was not. For over an hour they both dug away, sc.r.a.ping off what they could of the moss and fungus that covered the cedar planks. Doris made so little progress that she finally procured the ancient knife from the table and worked more easily with that implement. Not a vestige nor a trace of any writing was visible anywhere.

When the arms of both girls had begun to ache cruelly, and Genevieve had grown restless and was demanding to "go out," Sally suggested that they give it up for the day. But just at that moment, working in a far corner, Doris had stumbled upon a clue. The rusty knife had struck a curious k.n.o.bby break in the wood, which, on further sc.r.a.ping, developed the shape of a raised letter "T." At her exultant cry, Sally rushed over and frantically a.s.sisted in the quest. Sc.r.a.ping and digging for another fifteen minutes revealed at last a name, raised on the thick planking, which had evidently been the stern name-plate of the vessel. When it all stood revealed, the writing ran:

_The Anne Arundel_ _England 1843._

The two stood gazing at it a moment in puzzled silence. Then Doris threw down her knife.

"It's all off with the pirate theory, Sally!" she exclaimed.

"Why so?" demanded her companion, mystified for the moment.

"Just because," answered Doris, "if Richard Worley lived in 1718, he couldn't possibly have built a cave with the remains of a vessel dated 1843, and neither could any other pirate, for there weren't any more pirates as late as 1843. Don't you see?"

Sally did see and her countenance fell.

"Then what in the world _is_ the mystery?" she cried.

"That we've got to find the answer to in some other way," replied Doris, "for we're as much in the dark as ever!"

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST CLUE

It was a discouraged pair that rowed home from Slipper Point that morning. Sally was depressed beyond words by their recent discovery, for she had counted many long months on her "pirate theory" and the ultimate unearthing of buried treasure. Doris, however, was not so much depressed as she was baffled by this curious turn of the morning's investigation.

Thinking hard, she suddenly shipped her oars and turned about to face Sally with an exultant little exclamation.

"Do you realize that we've made a very valuable find this morning, after all, Sally?" she cried.

"Why, no, I don't. Everything's just spoiled!" retorted Sally dubiously.

"If it isn't pirates, it isn't anything that's _worth_ anything, is it?"

"I don't know yet how much it's worth," retorted Doris, "but I do know that we've unearthed enough to start us on a new hunt."

"Well, what is it?" demanded Sally, still incredulous.