Augusta Huiell Seaman

“ CHAPTER VI. LIGHT DAWNS ON MISS CAMILLA "Sally Carter, I have a new idea!" It was Doris who spoke. the two girls were sitting in the pine grove on the heights of Slipper Point. Each was knitting—an accomplishment they had recently learned. Genevieve was paddling in the water on the golden sand-bar below.
"What is it?" asked Sally, scowling over her work. She had come to some difficult purling in the khaki sweater and wished Miss Camilla were near to help her out. It was Miss Camilla who had taught them to knit, urging that every one should be so occupied in strenuous war time. ”

“ I went to open it, and gave a cry of joy, for there stood my brother Roland.
"Instead of greeting me, however, he seized my hand and cried: 'Father is very ill. He has had some sort of a stroke. Hurry downstairs to him at once. I must leave immediately. I can't even wait to see how he is. It is imperative!'
"‘But, Roland!' I cried, 'surely you won't go leaving Father like this!' But he only answered. 'I must, I must. It's my duty!' He seized me in his arms and kissed me, and was gone without another word. ”

“ My aunt died very suddenly and unexpectedly, while we were in Switzerland, and, as we had been alone, it was my sad duty to bring her back to New York. After her funeral, I hurried home here, wondering very much that my father had not come on to be with me, for I had sent him word immediately upon my arrival. My brother, I suspected, was away with the army. ”

“ It seemed to be filled with figures, added and subtracted, and, as my father had always been rather fond of dabbling with figures and mathematics, I put it down as being merely some calculations of his own that had no bearing on anything concerning me. I laid it carefully away with his other papers, however, and there it has been, in an old trunk in the attic of the unused part of the house all these years. When you spoke of a 'secret code,' however, it suddenly occurred to me that the note-book might be concerned in the matter. ”

“ She acts awfully worried, seems to me. Not at all as she did when we first knew her. I believe we ought to tell her right now. Call Genevieve and we 'll go over."
Sally called to Genevieve, who was playing in the boat on the beach below, and that young lady soon came scrambling up the bank. Hand in hand, all three started to the home of Miss Camilla, and, when they had reached it, found her sitting on her tiny porch knitting in apparently placid content. But true to Doris's observation, there were anxious lines in her face that had not been seen a month ago. ”