“Pictured crockery,” Jeanne murmured. “Seems strange that Indians should have done that!”
“And yet they must have been Indians,” Vivian replied. “Who else could have made them?
“And oh, Jeanne!” she cried with sudden enthusiasm. “What an addition they will make to my museum collection!”
“I wonder,” Jeanne said thoughtfully, “if these could have been the treasure referred to in that note?”
“Treasure? These?” Vivian laughed a merry laugh. “Pieces of old crockery! But,” she added thoughtfully, “they are a treasure, of a sort. Come on. I’ll take off my mackinaw and pack them in it. We’ll have to handle them with care.”
A half hour later, just as dusk was falling, they crept out of the cave. After a quarter hour spent in struggling up the steep rocky wall, they went hurrying down the slope toward home.
At the same time two men, one who limped and one who wore rags for shoes, were struggling across the narrow plateau where snow lay deep and wolf tracks were numerous, toward that steep wall of rock in which the cavern was hidden.
Jeanne’s question regarding the pieces of ancient crockery proved not to be so far wrong after all. The moment Sandy MacQueen saw them he exclaimed “What a discovery! Until this moment not a whole piece of Indian crockery has been found on the island, only fragments. And now, here you have a dozen or more perfect ones.
“But what is this?” He fairly leaped at one piece. “Here is the picture of that heathen god Thor! Can’t be any mistake about it. Why would Indians put such a picture on their crockery?”
“Know what?” His face beamed. “I may be wrong, but if I’m not, this will go far toward proving a story that until now has seemed more than half legend—that Norsemen, driven to the shores of America, perhaps a thousand years ago, came to this island for protection from savage Indians, and that they were the true discoverers of copper on Isle Royale.