“Let’s see it,” Jo said, and took the torn piece of blue woolen from Ben’s hand. “Hum,” he grunted thoughtfully as he turned it over and felt of it carefully.
“What is it, Jo?” asked Ann. “Does it mean something?”
“That I don’t rightly know,” Jo answered slowly. “It is just ordinary blue wool, but I know that not one of the fishermen around here wears anything like it. The really interesting thing about it, seems to me, is that it hasn’t been out in the weather any time. I should say it had never been rained on, nor the sun had a chance to bleach it. See, it hasn’t begun to fade.”
“You are right,” said Ann. She took the soft material in her hands. “This couldn’t have been torn from the clothing of any of the men who came to investigate, because that was so long ago that cloth torn from their suits would have worn away, such a little piece as this, with threads sticking out where it was torn off.”
“What sort of suit did your father wear the day he came here with my father?” inquired Jo.
“It was gray. He didn’t bring any dark suits with him, I’m sure,” answered Ann.
“And that isn’t the kind of cloth his blue suits are made of,” asserted Ben. “This is so thick; he wouldn’t wear that fuzzy thing.”
Jo put the bit of cloth into a pocket and carefully tucked it down into a safe corner; then he examined the splintered rail where their clue had been found.
“See,” he explained while the others hung over the edge to look, “the cloth caught on the outside of this splinter, as though the man who wore it slid down the side, holding on to the rail with his hands before he jumped free.”
“Well, ghosts don’t wear thick blue woolen clothes,” said Ann. “We can be sure that real people have been here.”