He sat down on the bank to talk with us. It turned out his name was Macmillan and that he was a lawyer in Ludington, which is about forty or fifty miles farther, and on the shore of Lake Michigan. Right off when he said he was a lawyer Mark was interested. I could see it by the way he squinted his little eyes and pulled on his fat cheek.
“M-m-mister Macmillan,” says Mark, “I want to show you s-somethin’.”
“All right, my son, go ahead.”
“I want to f-f-find out what it is, because it may b-be important.”
“Let’s have a look, then.”
Mark took a paper out of his pocket and gave it to Mr. Macmillan. “I’ve been wonderin’ w-w-what kind of a cipher that is,” says he, “or w-w-what it is if it isn’t a cipher. It m-m-means somethin’.”
“‘The S. 40 of the N. W. ¼ of Sec. 6, Town 1 north, R. 4 west.’ Hum. Does look mysterious, doesn’t it. But, my son, like a lot of things that look mysterious, it isn’t so a bit when you know about it. That is nothing but the description of land. You know there has to be some way of describing every farm, no matter what its size or shape may be, so that everybody will know just where to find it. Well, this cipher, as you call it, describes a farm of forty acres that is the northwest part of Section Six of township number one west of range seventeen. That’s all. Did you think it was telling where hidden treasure was hidden?”
Mark shook his head. “Maybe ’tis,” says he, and all the afternoon we couldn’t get another word out of him.
The rest of us talked with Mr. Macmillan and listened to stories about where he’d fished and hunted, and all about how this part of the state used to be a great pine forest that was butchered off and floated down-stream to the mills. I tell you it was interesting. It began to get late before he was half through, and he had to start for the place where his team was hitched.
“If you come to Ludington,” says he, “drop in to see me.”