“You believe in spirits, then?” she asked as if to cover, even in that sympathetic light, the suggestion of his broken words.
He nodded. “Assorted kinds—liquid, ghosts—and you.”
“Then maybe you won’t laugh at my fancy—” her voice lowered superstitiously—“that Grandfather Lauderdale’s spirit is hovering around inside this block-house—now.”
He did laugh, but softly. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Oh, he wouldn’t like any such formality! I can just see him sizing you up for himself with one glance of those blue, cliff-browed eyes of his. He used to tell me my inmost little-girl secrets before I could confide them to him, he was so second-sighted. The first time he brought me here was at one of his flag-raising dawns. I was very small, but I’ll never forget him, my tall, strong old fire-eater whom everybody but me thought queer, with his magnificent head of thick, white, curling hair. A sort of glory lit in his face from the rising sun and the tears staggered through the furrows of his cheeks when the flag caught the breeze—spread out its full assurance of the freedom he had fought to win.”
“Never mind that introduction. Already you have presented him to me. Howdy, old-timer! Right glad to meet you.”
Pape, his grin gone, reached forward and grasped and shook the empty air.
“As I grew older,” Jane continued, “I came with him often. One time was when they planted a bronze tablet in the outer wall as a tribute to the outpost service which this house rendered in the War of 1812.”
“They did, eh? A tablet—for the War of——” More than before Pape looked interested. “Maybe it ain’t granddad’s spirit, after all—maybe only the ghost of association.”
“No, I’m sure it is he. Wait. Perhaps he has a message for us.” Still with that vague smile on her lips, Jane closed her eyes and spoke dreamily: “He has a message. It is for me. He wants me to give you what I’ve wanted to give you all along, my entire confidence—to tell you that I’ve trusted you from first glance, no matter how I’ve acted—to tell you just what is the improbable-sounding treasure that we’ve been hunting so desperately, lest our enemies find and destroy it—to tell you how and why the possession of it will clear my father’s name and restore us to that ‘fortune forevermore’ promised in his cryptogram. You’ll be incredulous at first, Peter Pape, but all will work out once we have possession of—Listen, closely, now. That crock of the first verse holds——”