“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 illustrate 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 brass 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 snatched the rifle back into her own hands once more, and pried at the brass plate until she broke the edge of her thumb nail. Then Richard took it, and with the aid of a rusty button-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 shaggy hair was side by side with Georgina’s curls, his niriosity 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 button-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.