DORIS received the object from Sally and stood looking at it as it lay in her hands. It was a small, square, very flat tin receptacle of some kind, rusted and moldy, and about six inches long and wide. Its thickness was probably not more than a quarter of an inch.
“What in the world is it?” she questioned wonderingly.
“Open it and see!” answered Sally. Doris pried it open with some difficulty. It contained only a scrap of paper which fitted exactly into its space. The paper was brown with age and stained beyond belief. But on its surface could be dimly discerned a strange and inexplicable design.
“Of all things!” breathed Doris in an awestruck voice. “This certainly is a mystery, Sally. What do you make of it?”
“I don’t make anything of it,” Sally averred. “That’s just the trouble. I can’t imagine what it means. I’ve studied and studied over it all winter, and it doesn’t seem to mean a single thing.”
It was indeed a curious thing, this scrap of stained, worn paper, hidden for who knew how many years in a tin box far underground. For the riddle on the paper was this:
“Well, I give it up!” declared Doris, after she had stared at it intently for several more silent moments. “It’s the strangest puzzle I ever saw. But, do you know, Sally, I’d like to take it home and study it out at my leisure. I always was crazy about puzzles, and I’d just enjoy working over this, even if I never made anything out of it. Do you think it would do any harm to remove it from here?”
“I don’t suppose it would,” Sally replied, “but somehow I don’t like to change anything here or take anything away even for a little while. But you can study it out all you wish, though, for I made a copy of it a good while ago, so’s I could study it myself. Here it is.” And Sally pulled from her pocket a duplicate of the strange design, made in her own handwriting.
At this point, Genevieve suddenly became restless and, clinging to Sally’s skirts, demanded to “go and play in the boat.”