"No, it doesn't!" agreed Corinne ruefully. "And that's just where it's so disappointing. But there's this about it. In a puzzle like this, every little bit helps along. Sometimes, what really doesn't seem to amount to anything at all, leads at last to the most important discovery. For instance, that song—'The Lass of Richmond Hill.' That didn't impress us so much when we came across it, yet it really led to all the discoveries we've made. I propose that this afternoon we go over the whole thing again, just as carefully as we can, and see if there isn't some little clue that we may have constantly overlooked. Of course, I've done that by myself dozens of times, and so has Margaret. But four heads are better than one! Who knows but this time we may light on the very thing?"
She was so hopeful and enthusiastic about it that they all settled down to the work, reading over the old diary very slowly and discussing every point that seemed to offer the least suggestion of a clue. They had reached the entry which announced Washington's arrival, and were hotly debating the question whether or not Madame Mortier could be concerned in the plot against him, when suddenly they were electrified by hearing the loud crow of a rooster, coming apparently from the darkness at the far end of the room. (They had been talking and reading by the light of the open fire only.) Every one jumped, and Margaret caught her hand to her heart. But Bess instantly recovered herself, darted across the room, dived behind the curtains, and returned dragging into the circle a grinning, giggling small boy.
"It's Alexander, of course!" was her brief remark. Her captive was certainly an extraordinary-looking youngster! Wiry, and undersized for his age (he was thirteen), he possessed a snub-nose, a shock of brilliant red hair, and a quantity of freckles that literally "snowed under" his grinning countenance. His appearance was rendered all the more remarkable by the fact that he had cut a series of holes in an old, round, soft hat, and his brilliant hair stuck straight up through these in astonishing red bunches. Not one whit did he seem to resent the publicity into which his recent exploit had brought him! Rather did he appear to glory in the situation.
"Aren't you ashamed to be eavesdropping behind the curtains?" demanded Bess, shaking him by his collar, of which she still retained her hold.
Alexander straightened himself and made this cryptic reply:
"I don't get yer! But if yer mean piking off this chinning contest,—no, I ain't!"
At the foregoing remarkable explosion of slang, Corinne suddenly went off into a peal of laughter.
"Oh, Alexander, you're rich!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad to make your acquaintance. Teach me some of that, will you!"
The boy turned to her with an appreciative and understanding twinkle in his eye: "Sure thing! I'll put you wise, any old time!"
But Jess suddenly broke into this exchange of amenities. "Do you girls realize what has happened? Alexander Corwin has been listening to all the proceedings of our secret society, and now he knows just as much as we do! Oh, I could scalp you!" she ended, making a sudden dart at her cousin, who, though still in the grasp of Bess, ducked and evaded her. There had been unceasing warfare between Alexander and the twins ever since he came to reside with them. He teased them unmercifully, and they sought frantically, and always in vain, to retaliate. There seemed nothing they could devise that affected him in the slightest. This, the most recent outrage, constituted to them, therefore, the last straw! Suddenly Margaret intervened: