"'I would like to know why you ask? Whom do you know of that name?' Well, Corinne and I looked at each other and I saw we were agreed that it was time to make a bold move, so I said right out that we were very much interested in some one who lived in Bermuda a long while ago and whose name was Alison Trenham.
"Folks, if I live to be a hundred, I'll never forget the strange expression that came over that old lady's face when I spoke that name! For a minute or two she didn't answer—just sat quietly thinking. Then at last she said, still very quietly:
"'Yes, I know the name! I have heard of only one Alison Trenham in my life, and that was—my grandmother!'"
There was a gasp and a start from her listeners, and Margaret laughed as she continued:
"You'd just better believe we jumped, too! And I thought Corinne's eyes would pop out of her head—she looked so startled! I just couldn't help smiling to myself at her expression, though I was so deep in other things. Then I said:
"'Well, Mrs. Jewell, since you do know an Alison Trenham, and she was your own grandmother, I guess we'd just better tell you our whole story. For the two Alisons may turn out to be the same!' Then, as quickly as I could, I told her all about finding the trunk and the journal, and our Antiquarian Club, and all the discoveries we made afterward, and how we'd come to a snag and could get no further. I even told her how Sarah had burned the original journal. But I didn't say a word about the sapphire signet—just then. I wish you could have seen the expression on her face all the time I was talking! It was as though she were listening to a story so strange that she couldn't believe a word of it! I ended by begging her, please, if she could throw the least light on our mystery, to oblige us by doing so, as it was the chief aim of our Antiquarian Club to find the key to the riddle!
"She was silent a long time after I had finished—so long that we were beginning to think she must have fallen asleep, for she had covered her eyes with her hand, and was leaning her elbow on the arm of the chair. But suddenly she spoke, saying very low:
"'All this seems like a dream to me! You children have stumbled upon a secret that I supposed no mortal would ever discover in this world! The ways of chance are very mysterious! Yes, it is the same Alison; and since you know so much, I am going to tell you the rest of the story, though she made me solemnly promise, when I was a young girl, that I would never tell a soul. That is why I was hesitating. But I feel certain that, were she to know these circumstances, she would have no real objection to your knowing the whole story. It can harm no one now—least of all herself!
"'As I told you, she was my grandmother. I was born in 1820, and she was then a woman sixty years old. My own mother and father died in my infancy, and left me to her care. This was her home, this same old farm, and I came here to live with her. We are a long-lived race, here in Bermuda, and she lived on to be almost ninety-five, as I myself am doing! A few years before she died she told me that she had something on her conscience that she would like to tell me, because she felt that she would die happier, knowing that she had not kept the secret unconfessed to the end. She made me promise I would never disclose it, as some of it had once been of political consequence, and she had always feared its discovery.'