When Marion Parke went back to her room the night after Miss Ashton’s entertainment, she was in a great deal of perturbation. The title of Susan Downer’s story, on its announcement, had filled her with surprise, for since her coming to the school she had never before heard West Rock mentioned. When she had asked about it, no one seemed even to have known of it, and that Susan should not only have heard, but been so interested as to choose it for the subject of her story, was a puzzle! But when the story was read, and she found it, in all its details, so exactly like her father’s, her surprise changed to a miserable suspicion, of which she was heartily ashamed, but from which she could not escape. Sentence after sentence, event after event, were so familiar to her, nothing was changed but the names of the women who figured in the story.
The first thing she did after coming to her room was to take the magazine from under the Bible, and open to the story. There was an ink-blot on the first page, which some one had evidently been trying to remove with the edge of a knife. It must have 99 been done hastily, for the leaf was jagged, and most of the ink left on.
This Marion was sure was not there the last time she had opened the magazine; some one had dropped it recently. Who was it?
She hastily re-read the story. Yes, she had not been mistaken, Susan Downer’s story was the same!
Was it possible that two people, her father and Susan, who had never been in New Haven, but might have known about Goff and Whalley from her study of English history, though not about West Rock as her father had seen and described it, could have happened upon the same story? How very, very strange!
Marion dropped the magazine as if it was accountable for her perplexity; then she sat and stared at it, until she heard the door opening, when she snatched it up, and hid it away at the bottom of her trunk.
It was Dorothy who came into the room; and Marion’s first impulse was to go to her and tell her all about it, ask her what she should do, for do something she felt sure she must.
Dorothy saw her, and called,—
“Marion! isn’t it splendid that Sue wrote such a fine piece? I feel that she is a real honor to our class and to Rock Cove! Her brother Jerry will be so happy when he hears of it.”
“Why, Marion!” catching sight of Marion’s pale 100 face, “what is the matter with you? You look as pale as a ghost. Are you sick?”