But George Warren failed to inform either Henry Burns or any one else about his discovery; for he went on a week’s cruise, next day, and when he returned it had passed out of his mind. At least, he didn’t think of it till about two weeks later.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TWO SECRETS DISCOVERED
Squire Brackett sat in his office, deep in thought. To say that he was out of temper, would be putting it mildly. Something that he was trying to do baffled him; and, being thwarted, he was irritable and unhappy. Now when Squire Brackett was unhappy, he usually succeeded in making everybody else with whom he came in contact likewise unhappy. Therefore, when he betook himself to his office, of an afternoon, and sat himself down at his desk, to attempt to solve a certain puzzle, as he had done now for several weeks, at intervals, the members of his household kept discreetly aloof.
Before the squire, on the shelf of his desk, lay the paper on which he had pasted the scraps of Mr. Carleton’s letter. The first effort at a solution of the puzzle had been one more of curiosity than aught else on his part. He had thought it would be rather a smart achievement, to discover something which another man had attempted to destroy, though it probably would be of no particular importance to the discoverer. But, from that condition of mind, he had progressed to a state wherein he thought he saw, hidden in the fragments of the letter, something of more than ordinary import.
As Squire Brackett had arranged them, the words and parts of words now lay before him thus:
lock
ey
must be
sound
mbers