"Tom, we musn't—Dan, Mother! ..."
Unheeding her protest, he put his arms around her. An instant he felt her yield, then quickly thrusting him aside, she ran from the room, leaving him standing alone there, trembling with excitement, chagrin, happiness, alarm.
In a moment his friend returned and Tom pulled himself together. "Come on," said Dan, "I have a lot to tell you."
"Did you find anything this afternoon?" exclaimed Pembroke.
"Sh! for heaven's sake be careful. Don't talk here. Let's go upstairs."
A few minutes later they were closeted in Dan's chamber. The curtains were tightly drawn and a heavy quilt was hung over the door. Good Lord! thought Tom, could it be possible that these precautions in part at least were taken against Nancy. The world seemed to have turned upside down for him in the last twenty-four hours.
"Aren't we going to keep watch to-night?" he asked.
"Yes, but later. They are just getting to bed—or pretending to. Look here, this may throw light on the mystery. I found this paper in a secret cubby-hole in the old cabinet in the Oak Parlour. Draw a chair up to the table so that you can see."
"The cabinet," he continued, as he took the paper out of his strong-box and began to unfold it, "was brought from some old manor house in England. It has four little secret cubby-holes, opened by hidden springs, that Mother says were probably used by the Roman Catholics to hide pages of their mass-books during the days of persecution. She remembered fortunately a little about them. They were all empty but one, and in that I found this torn scrap of paper."
He handed the yellowed bit of writing to Tom, who flattened it out on the table before him.