“Or a misfortune,” suggested Dick, who in his childhood had been a firm believer in all the mysteries and wonder workings recorded in the Arabian Night’s Entertainments, and still recalled them upon the smallest suggestion. “Shut up as it is, with no sign of an opening, who knows but that it bears Solomon’s seal on it? The inscription may be Solomon’s autograph, put there to hold captive some malicious genie. We all know what happened to the fisherman who let the smoke out of the copper vase.”
“Oh, I’ll take my chances on that sort of thing,” laughingly answered Tom, who, as the discoverer, was recognized by his comrades as the rightful owner of the box and the person entitled to say what should be done with it.
“Of course,” said Cal. “Genii don’t play tricks in our time and country. They’re afraid of the constable.”
The boys had reached the camp now, and a few minutes later a pile of blazing fat pine made the space around it as light as day. For an hour, perhaps, the boys minutely examined the queer casket. There was, or had been, an inscription cut upon its upper surface with the point of a penknife, but the corroding of the surface had so far obliterated it that the boys succeeded only in doubtfully guessing at a half-effaced letter here and there and in making out the figures 865 at the end of the writing.
“That’s the date,” said Larry—“1865, the figure one obliterated. Obviously the inscription tells us nothing. What next, Tom?”
Tom was minutely examining the sides of the case, scraping off the rust with his thumb nail. Presently, instead of answering Larry’s question, he cried out:
“Eureka! See here, boys! This box was made in two pieces exactly alike, one top and the other bottom. The two have been fitted together and then a hot iron has been drawn over the seam, completely obliterating it. It’s the nicest job of sealing a thing up water tight and air tight that I ever saw, but I’m going to spoil it.”
With that he opened his jackknife and very carefully drew its point along the line where the upper and lower halves of the casket had been joined. After he had traced the line twice with the knife point the two halves suddenly fell apart, and some neatly folded and endorsed papers were found within.
Tom began reading the endorsements, but before he had run half through the first one he leaped up, waving the documents over his head and shouting “hurrah!” in a way that Cal said was “like the howling of a demon accidentally involved with the accentuations of a buzz saw.”