"Grandfather was good and ready to talk wrecks with me last night," began Sally, "for there was no one else about to talk to. You know, the pavilion opened for dancing the first time this season, and every one made a bee-line for that. Grandfather never goes down to the Landing at night, so he was left stranded for some one to talk to and was right glad to have me. I began by asking him to tell me something about when he was a young man and how things where around here and how he came to go to sea. It always pleases him to pieces to be asked to tell about those times, so he sailed in and I did n't do a thing but sit and listen, though I 've heard most of all that before.
"But after a while he got to talking about how he 'd been shipwrecked and along about there I saw how it would be easy to switch him off to the shipwrecks that happened around here. When I did that he had plenty to tell me and it was rather interesting too. By and by I said, just quietly, as if I was n't awfully interested:
"'Grandfather, I 've heard tell of a ship called the Anne Arundel that was wrecked about here once. Do you know anything of her?' And he said he just guessed he did. She came ashore one winter night, along about 1850, in the worst storm they 'd ever had on this coast. He was a young man of twenty then and he helped to rescue some of the sailors and passengers. She was a five-masted schooner, an English ship, and she just drove right up on the shore and went to pieces. They did n't get many of her crew off alive, as most of them had been swept overboard in the heavy seas.
"But, listen to this. He said that the queer part of it all was that, though her hulk and wreckage lay on the beach for a couple of months or so, and nobody gave it any attention, suddenly, in one week, it all disappeared as clean as if another hurricane had hit it and carried it off. But this was n't the case, because there had been fine weather for a long stretch. Everybody wondered and wondered what had become of the Anne Arundel but nobody ever found out. It seemed particularly strange because no one, not even beach-combers, would be likely to carry off a whole wreck, bodily, like that."
"And he never had a suspicion," cried Doris, "that some one had taken it to build that little cave up the river - How perfectly wonderful, Sally!"
"No, but there 's something about it that puzzles me a lot," replied Sally. "They took it to fix up that cave, sure enough. But, do you realize, Doris, that it only took a small part of a big vessel like that, to build the cave. What became of all the rest of it? Why was it all taken, when so little of it was needed? What was it used for?"
This was as much a puzzle to Doris as to Sally. "I 'm sure I can't imagine," she replied. "But one thing 's certain. We 've got to find out who took it and why, if it takes all summer. By the way! I 've got a new idea about why that cave was built. I believe it was for some one who wanted to hide away, - a prisoner escaped from jail, for instance, or some one who was afraid of being put in prison because he 'd done something wrong, or it was thought he had. How about that?"
"Then what about the queer piece of writing we found?" demanded Sally. Doris had to admit she could not see where that entered into things.
"Well," declared Sally, at length, "I 've got a brand new idea about it too. It came from something else Grandfather was telling me last night. If it was n't pirates it was - smugglers!"
"Mercy!" cried Doris. "What makes you think so?"
"Because Grandfather was telling me of a lot of smugglers who worked a little farther down the coast. They used to run in to one of the rivers with a small schooner they cruised in, and hide lots of stuff that they 'd have to pay duty on if they brought it in the proper way. They hid it in an old deserted house near the shore and after a while would sell what they had and bring in some more. By and by the government officers got after them and caught them all.
"It just set me to thinking that this might be another hiding place that was never discovered, and this bit of paper the secret plan to show where or how they hid the stuff. Perhaps they were all captured at some time, and never got back here to find the rest of their things. I tell you, we may find some treasure yet, though it probably won't be like what the pirates would have hidden."
Doris was decidedly fired by the new idea. "It sounds quite possible to me," she acknowledged, "and what we want to do now is to try and work out the meaning of that queer bit of paper."
"Yes, and by the way, you said quite a while ago that you had an idea about that," Sally reminded her. "What was it?"
"Oh, I don't know as it amounts to much," said Doris. "So many things have happened since, that I 've half forgotten about it. But if we 're going up to Slipper Point, I can show you better when we get there. Do you know, Sally, I believe I 'm just as much interested if that 's a smuggler's cave as if it had been a pirate's. It 's actually thrilling!"
And without further words, they bent their energies toward reaching their destination.
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