With deep interest he examined a small, oblong, metal box, such as snuff was carried in many years ago, turning it over and over, and trying in vain to open it. The box was greatly discolored and so dingy that John was not sure of the quality of the metal, though he supposed it to be silver.
“Where’d you find it, Ring?” he asked, but the dog only wagged his tail as his head was patted.
“There’s a strange thing to find in such a place as this,” cried John, tossing the box to Ree, as he reached the camp. “Ring fetched it up out of the valley yonder.”
“Well! What’s in it?” Ree asked interestedly. “There’s no name on it. Open it.”
“I don’t know who has a better right,” was John’s reply, and without more ado Ree struck the edge of the box sharply against the heavy wheel of the cart. A piece of paper, yellow and water-stained, fell to the ground as the lid flew open.
“Maybe this will tell whose box it is,” said John, picking the paper up, “if it isn’t too dark to read it. Why, it’s only a piece of some old letter or something,” he added, unfolding a long half-sheet of the size commonly known as foolscap. “There’s no name at the beginning or the end, that I can see.”
“It is a woman’s writing,” said Ree, looking over his chum’s shoulder. “But I guess it doesn’t amount to much. Some poor chap’s sweetheart wrote it, maybe, and he must have carried it a long while before he lost it. I wish we knew just where Ring got hold of it; for”—and Kingdom’s voice sank to a whisper—“I am afraid, John, it may be another case like that of our friend in the cart here.”
“But let’s find out what it says,” John answered impatiently.
“It is too dark. It won’t do to make a target of ourselves by building enough fire to see by, and we will have to let it go till morning.”
The wisdom of Ree’s remark about too much firelight was very apparent, so John conquered his curiosity by joking his companion about the fear he had expressed that the snuff box might have been found upon the person of some white man cruelly murdered in the woods, as Theodore Hatch had so nearly been.