Hattie May threw me a triumphant look. “Don’t you think it’s the Circe, Sandy?” Eve asked. “You see the arms are broken off but one of them is lifted just as if it might have been holding a wand.”
It was true. The little figure was smaller than the other one in the garden and it was so blackened by age that the features were hardly discernible. But there was no doubt that it was a woman’s figure and that one arm had been upraised. In spite of myself, I felt a queer shivery thrill as I gazed at it. “But where did it come from?” I demanded eagerly. “Where did it stand?”
“That,” said Eve, “is just what we’ve got to find out. There simply must be a pedestal somewhere that we’ve overlooked. It certainly was never set up down by that old well, nobody would put a statue in a vacant lot.”
“And when we find where she stood,” put in Hamish, “then we’ll know where to dig!”
Almost with one accord we all got up again and set out on another tour of the garden. We had already raked it pretty thoroughly but this time we had something definite to urge us on. We had discovered the enchantress, there remained only to discover her resting place.
Back and forth we wandered, poking at every tangle of bushes and clump of thick grass, kicking at every fallen tree branch. In his zeal, Hamish even began turning up the slabs of stone which had once formed a walk as if he expected to find some clue tucked away with the horrid white crawly things underneath.
Discouraged at last, I came back to the fountain. After all, I told myself, I didn’t really believe in the buried treasure. Michael didn’t, I knew, and I was pretty sure he was right. Still I did wish we could find where the statue had stood just—well just for the satisfaction of knowing. But though Hamish and the others were still plunging madly about, the search seemed as hopeless as it had from the first. Indeed the discovery of the statue had really helped matters little.
Where would one put a Circe, I wondered? A small, graceful figure like that? On a pedestal of course—but where? Somewhere where she would not be overlooked, I thought—some conspicuous place——
And then, in a flash of inspiration, my eyes turned to the center of the fountain. In imagination I saw her there—lithe, poised, with arm upraised! And from that vanished wand, I was suddenly sure, had come the jets of water which had played in the sunshine of those bygone summers!
“Eve! Hamish!” I cried excitedly. Picking up the statue, I stepped across the leaf-filled bowl. I reached up and set it there in the middle. “Look!” I shouted, “It fits—fits perfectly!”