[CHAPTER XXXIII]
In Which the Letter is Opened, Billy and Archie are Confronted by a Cryptogram, and, Having Exercised Their Wits, Conclude that Somebody is in Desperate Trouble
It was a woman's doing. The signs of a woman were like print—little tracks in the snow—a woman's little foot; and the snow was brushed by a skirt. What woman? A girl? It was a romantic suggestion. Billy Topsail was old enough to respond to the appeal of chivalry. A perception of romance overwhelmed him. He was thrilled. He blushed. Reflecting, thus, his thought tinged with the fancies of romance, his chivalry was fully awakened. No; he would not open the letter. It was a woman's letter. An impulse of delicacy forbade him to intrude. Wrong? Perhaps. Yet it was a fine impulse. He indulged it. He stowed the letter away. And at dawn, still in a chivalrous glow, he set out for Bread-and-Butter Tickle, resolved to deliver the letter that night; and he was caught by dusk on the ridge of Spear Head, with a flurry of wet snow in the wind and the night threatening thick.
Having come to the edge of the moving ice, Billy Topsail looked across to the lights of Bread-and-Butter.
"Might 's well," he decided.
Between Spear Head and Bread-and-Butter Tickle, that night, Billy Topsail had a nip-and-tuck time of it. It was dark. Snow intermittently obscured his objective. The ice was fragmentary—driving and revolving in a slow wind. It was past midnight when he hauled down the heads of Bread-and-Butter and knocked Archie Armstrong out of bed.
"Archie," said he, "I found a queer thing."
Archie's sleepiness vanished.
"Queer?" he demanded, eagerly. "Something queer? What is it?"