One might have thought that Mark would stop romancing, after having discovered a secret panel, but he didn’t rest satisfied. Having read a story about two boys who found a lost will in a trunk in an old attic, Mark became interested in the possibilities of their newly acquired one. There were three rooms up there, two of them used to store the family’s trunks. The third room Mark appropriated and made into what he called his “den.”
The “den” had an old matting upon its floor. The matting had been there when Mark and Marjorie moved into the new home. Mark always accepted it and had never found any romantic suggestions coming from that source till one night, Richard having been allowed to spend a night with him, they carried a mattress up there and slept on the floor, “for fun,” they said. Mark had a lantern and they talked till nearly two o’clock telling stories to each other. It was really great fun. Mark’s stories were full of adventure—some of them even were creepy, as it was nearing Hallowe’en day by day. And what was more fitting than right in the middle of Mark’s last thriller, there should be a strange rattle and a clinking noise! It made Mark hush and it made Richard jump. They looked at each other in frightened silence for a minute.
“What was it?” asked Mark, as soon as he could breathe again calmly.
“Oh, a mouse, I guess,” returned Richard.
“A mouse, forsooth! Nay!” returned Mark, talking in a romantic way. “Me-thinks it is a strange noise, friend. It cometh from under this matting. I will take up the matting and if need be the floor and we shall see—” Here he pulled up an end of old matting.
Richard was willing to have another of Mark’s adventures, so he helped. It wasn’t hard to get it up—but when it was once up the most astonishing thing came to light. Even Richard was amazed. As for Mark, he was in his element of discovery. There upon the floor was a big round circle. The floor was painted but the circle was not!
“What is it?” inquired Richard.
Mark debated. “I don’t know,” he mused. “It’s evidently something!” He measured the circle. It was about three feet in diameter. He was for tearing up the flooring at once, only Richard reminded him that it would make a dreadful noise and wake everybody in the house up. Surely a fortune and a lost will must be under it! Richard silenced Mark’s objection to waiting till daylight and after school by saying that they would never be allowed to sleep in the attic on a mattress again, if the two of them got into trouble. That was true. So they sat up, wrapped in blankets, listening for the sound that seemed to have gone away and also for other sounds that did not come. And they wondered excitedly how a circle like that should come to be upon an attic floor, if not purposely put there to mark something. Richard suggested that it might be an old astrologer’s room and that the circle was one upon which he might have cast horoscopes. That sounded rather fascinating but neither Mark nor Richard knew anything about astrologers or even what they did when they cast horoscopes. So this was rather romantic and they talked a great deal about it, once in a while switching off to goblins and Hallowe’en. Mark and Richard discussed, among other topics, what they should do to make Hallowe’en truly exciting. They were going to dress up like witches and go to call upon some friends. Richard was planning to carry his black cat in a bag and they were going to wear masks. Probably Marjorie would beg to go too—girls always did want to go too—and they’d let her into the secret about the circle on the attic floor too, wouldn’t they?
Richard assented. He and Marjorie were good friends.
“I tell you what!” exclaimed Mark, suddenly. “After we’re dressed up, we’ll all come up here early in the evening. Maybe Mother and Daddy’ll have gone to the pictures. Then we’ll take up the floor and see what’s under the circle!” It seemed a thing quite fit for the night of Hallowe’en.