of a
word--every letter?"

Her eyes smiled into mine with a reassurance that was like balm. Worth
rose and found her a hand-glass on the mantel, passing it to her, and
with this to reverse the scrawlings, she read and I wrote down in my
memorandum book two complete words, two broken words and five single
letters picked from overlying marks that were too confused to be
decipherable. Though the three of us struggled with them, they held no
meaning.

Worth's interest quickly ceased.

"I'll join Jim Edwards in the house," he said, but I stopped him.

"One minute, Worth. There was a woman visitor here last night. It would
seem she carried away with her the diary of 1920 and three leaves from
the book of 1916. I want you--you and Barbara--to tell me what you know
that happened here in Santa Ysobel on the dates of the missing pages,
May 31 and June 1, 1916."

Barbara accepted the task, turning that wonderful cinematograph memory
back, and murmured,

"I never tried recollecting on just a bare date this way, but--" then
glanced around at me and finished--"nothing happened to me in Santa
Ysobel then, because I wasn't in Santa Ysobel. I was in San Francisco
and--"

"And I was in Flanders, so that lets me out," Worth broke in brusquely.
"I'll go into the house."

"Wait, Worth." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go on, Barbara; you had
thought of something."

"Yes. Father died in January of that year, and in March I had to vacate
the house. It had been sold, and they wanted to fix it over. I left
Santa Ysobel on the eighteenth of March, but they didn't get into the
house until June first."

Again Worth interrupted.

"Which jogs my memory for an unexciting detail." He smiled
enigmatically. "I was jilted June first."

"In Flanders?" How many times had this lad been jilted?

"No. Right here. I wasn't here of course, but the letter which did the
trick was written here, and bore that date--June one, 1916."

"How do you get the date so pat?"

"It was handed me by the mail orderly--I was on the Verdun sector
then--on the morning of the Fourth of July. Remember the date the letter
was written because of the quick time it made. Most of our mail took
from six weeks to eternity. What are you smiling at, Bobs?"

"Just a little--you don't mind, do you?--at your saying you remember
Ina's letter by the quick time it made in reaching you."

"Who bought your house, Barbara?" I asked her.

"Dr. Bowman--or rather Mrs. Bowman's