of course, that the Cromarty people have been
hunting it for nearly forty years."

"Yes," said Patty, and her eyes fairly blazed with determination,
"yes--but I am an American!"

Tom Meredith shouted with laughter.

"Good for you, little Stars and Stripes!" he cried. "I've always heard of
the cleverness of the Yankees, but if you can trace the Cromarty fortune,
I'll believe you a witch, for sure. Aren't there witches in that New
England of yours?"

"I believe there used to be. And my ancestors, some of them, were Salem
people. That may be where I get my taste for divination and solving
problems. I just love puzzles of all sorts, and if the old Cromarty
gentleman had only left a cipher message, it would have been fun to
puzzle it out."

"He did leave messages of some sort, didn't he? Maybe they are more
subtle than you think."

"I've been wondering about that. They might mean something entirely
different from what they sound like; but I can't see any light that way.
'The headboard of a bed against a wall,' is pretty practical, and doesn't
seem to mean anything else. And the oak trees and fir trees are there in
abundance. But that's the trouble with them, there are so many."

"Go on, and do all you can, my child. You'll get over it the sooner, if
you work hard on it at first. We've all been through it. Nearly everybody
in this part of the country has tried at one time or another to guess the
Cromarty riddle."

"But I'm the first American to try," insisted Patty, with a twinkle in
her eye.

"Quite so, Miss Yankee Doodle Doo; and I wish you success where my own
countrymen have failed."

Tom said this with such a nice, kindly air that Patty felt a little
ashamed of her own vaunting attitude. But sometimes Patty showed a
decided tendency to over-assuredness in her own powers, and though she
tried to correct it, it would spring up now and again. Then the Hartley
boys joined them, and all discussion of the missing fortune was dropped.

It was soon time to take leave, and as it was already twilight, Sinclair
proposed that he should drive Patty home in the pony cart, and Mabel
should return in the carriage.

Mabel quite agreed to this, saying that after her croquet, she did not
care to drive. The road lay through a lovely bit of country, and Patty
enjoyed the drive home with Sinclair. She always liked to talk with him,
he was so gentle and kindly. While not so merry as Bob or as Tom
Meredith, Sinclair was an inter