The Manor House School Part 22

"He must have made it up himself, as it's signed with his initials,"

continued Cicely. "It was rather clever of him, wasn't it?--especially if he was mad. I'm sure I couldn't invent verses, however hard I tried."

"'My _First_, used by a king for securing a letter', is evidently 'Solomon's Seal'," said Lindsay. "Give me that spare piece of paper, and I'll put it down."

"'My _Second'_ must be 'Evening Primrose'," said Cicely. "I can't think of any other yellow flower that comes out at night."

The third for a long time baffled the efforts of both girls to discover it. They searched through the lists of wild and garden flowers in vain.

"Irises are sometimes called 'flags'," ventured Cicely at last, turning to the page of 'F' in the index. "Why, here are quite a number. There are Asiatic flag, and corn flag, and dwarf flag, and Florentine flag, and German flag. Oh! and a heap more, too--golden flag, and Iberian flag, and j.a.panese, and Persian, and Missouri, and Tasmanian."

"That's the one!" said Lindsay. "Van Diemen's Land is the old name for Tasmania. 'My _Third_' must be Tasmanian flag."

"Why, of course. We're getting on, aren't we?"

The fourth, as it was stated to be a wild flower, was sought for in the list at the end of _British Flora_. It did not take a very large amount of penetration to fix it as 'tormentilla', especially as they could identify its golden eye in the coloured picture.

"The great trusses of lavender hue, growing on a shrub in spring, will mean lilac. I'm getting quite proud of our guessing," declared Lindsay.

"We've only one more left now," said Cicely.

The last proved the most difficult of all. I doubt if they would have been able to solve it, had not Lindsay chanced to take down an ancient herbal, and found a list of plants once employed for medicine.

"Amid all herbes that do grow, and are of greatest comfort and solace to mankind," so ran the pa.s.sage, "a foremost place hath the euphrasy.

Though it be but an humble plant scarce an inch in height, yet it maketh an ointment very precious for to cure dimness of sight. Thence it hath been called in the vulgar tongue 'eye-bright', nevertheless its true name is euphrasy, and thus it is known among apothecaries."

"It must be right," said Lindsay. "It's the only one that is said to do any good to the eyesight. The others seem to be for toothaches or agues."

"Or to heal wounds or sores," said Cicely. "People must have been continually hurting themselves in those days, if they needed so many 'salves' and 'unguents'."

They had now discovered all the six flowers, and wrote the result neatly down on a piece of paper.

S olomon's Sea L E vening Primros E T asmanian Fla G T ormentill A L ila C E uphras Y

"The initials read 'settle' and the finals 'legacy'," said Cicely. "How very queer! That hasn't anything to do with flowers."

"Let us look at the end lines again," said Lindsay, and she read aloud:

Please take my initials and finals likewise: The former you'll find to be hiding the latter; If you've solved the enigma you'll see 'tis a matter Perchance may provide you with just a lost link, And bring you a greater reward than you think.

"The initials hide the finals. 'Settle' hides 'Legacy'," repeated Cicely meditatively.

"Why, I see it now!" burst out Lindsay suddenly. "Oh, Cicely, I believe it means a great deal more than an ordinary riddle! It has something to do with the lost treasure. Don't you understand? The settle is hiding the legacy--Monica's legacy!"

"Oh, surely not!" exclaimed Cicely, bouncing up in great excitement.

"But I really think so. The poetry says the enigma is 'to provide the lost link' and 'bring a greater reward than you think'. This is indeed a discovery! It's evidently intended to tell Monica where her money is to be found."

"Can we be quite, quite certain?" hesitated Cicely.

"Well, everything seems to point to it. Don't you recollect Irene Spencer said that in old Sir Giles' will he left 'the Manor and all that it may contain to my great-niece Monica, especially commending to her the volumes in my library, and advising her to pursue the study of botany'? I remember those were the exact words. This must have been the reason. He had written the secret of the hiding-place inside the _Floral Calendar_, and he thought she would find it there. Perhaps he wasn't so very mad after all."

"I wonder if Monica has seen it and puzzled it out?"

"I don't know. She said she didn't often trouble about the books."

"Then is the treasure hidden inside some old settle in the house?"

"It seems likely."

"In that case we must be wrong about the lantern room."

"Perhaps we are. Well, at any rate this throws new light on the subject, and gives us a clue as to where to hunt. We'll go over the Manor again, and look carefully at every settle."

"I hope we're really on the right track at last," sighed Cicely. "What a glorious day it would be if we could actually say to Monica: 'Here's your fortune!'"

CHAPTER XIII

Lindsay Makes a Resolve

Lindsay and Cicely thought they understood what a settle was, but, to avoid the possibility of any mistake, they looked the word up in the dictionary. "Settle--a long bench, with high back, for sitting on," was the explanation given by that authority.

"So it 'settles' the matter," said Cicely, trying to make a pun.

"Well, it shows us it's not a chest, anyhow," replied Lindsay, "though the oak bench in the pa.s.sage near the top of the stairs has a kind of box under it. The seat lifts up like a lid."

There were four pieces of old furniture in the Manor which might claim to answer to the description given in the dictionary. Two were in the dining-room, one in the picture gallery, and another, as Lindsay had said, at the head of the stairs. The girls made a most lengthy and careful inspection of them all, but without the slightest result.

Neither their backs nor their seats were hollow, or capable of containing anything. Three of them stood upon carved oak legs, like chairs, and though the last was made in the fas.h.i.+on of a chest, it proved on investigation to be absolutely empty. It was a bitter disappointment.

"Can we have been mistaken about the enigma?" said Cicely, almost in tears.

"I don't believe so. What I think is, that Mrs. Wilson and Scott have been clever enough to find the money and carry it off. Perhaps there was another settle somewhere in the house, and they took it bodily away."

"Wouldn't Monica have missed it?"

"It may have been done just after Sir Giles died, and before she came to the Manor."

"Where would they put it?"

"Possibly in the lantern room, inside some hiding-place they know of."

"Then, until we can find out the secret of the lantern room, it seems to me we can't get any farther."

"And we don't even know that the treasure is still there, because it may be buried in the garden," groaned Lindsay.

The whole affair of the lost legacy was most aggravating and tantalizing. They seemed so continually on the point of unravelling the mystery, only to find themselves again defeated and baffled. Cicely was tempted to throw it up altogether in despair, but Lindsay had a native obstinacy of disposition that could not bear to be beaten.