The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery; Or, The Christmas Adventure at Carver House

where it has stayed all this while. I opened all the other letters that came after his death and took care of the matters they concerned. I hope this isn't a bill--the creditor will think we are poor business people not to reply." She reached for the letter opener and slit the envelope. Inside was a letter, not a bill, written in a cramped, shaky hand upon coarse notepaper. It was dated from a small town in New York State. Nyoda carried it over to the window and read it: "Mr. Jasper Carver, Esq., Oakwood, Pa. Dear Sir: I take the liberty of writing to you, for you are the only one I can find a trace of who was a friend of the late Dr. Sidney Phillips. I found a card with your name and address on the floor of his room after he left the army post at Ft. Andrews, and to you I am committing the task of clearing his name from a disgrace which has unjustly been fastened upon it. He is dead, and the wrong can never be righted to him, but for the sake of his friends and relatives his memory must not remain dishonored. This letter is at once an explanation and a confession. I was a Captain of Infantry at Ft. Andrews when Dr. Phillips came there as army surgeon. There was another officer there, a sneaking, underhand sort of chap with whom I was having constant trouble. Upon one occasion he committed a grave breach of military discipline, but managed to throw the blame upon me and I was deprived of my captain's commission and reduced to the ranks, besides doing time in the guard house. I brooded upon my wrong until I was ready to murder the man who had brought it upon me. At the time of the typhoid epidemic, matters were in bad shape at Ft. Andrews. That was before the days of Red Cross nurses, and many of the boys had to turn in and nurse their comrades. I was detailed to help Dr. Phillips. The man who had ruined me was down with the fever. Ever since I had been reduced to the ranks he had taunted me openly with my disgrace and even as he lay in bed he made insulting remarks when I brought him his medicine. Finally in a mad rage I decided to be revenged upon him once and forever. I put a deadly poison into the dose Dr. Phillips had just mixed for him, slipping it in while the doctor was out of the room for a moment. I thought the dose was intended for him alone, but to my horror it was given to a dozen men, and they all died. The whole country became stirred up about it, and such abuse was hurled at Dr. Phillips as no man ever suffered before. It was supposed that he had carelessly mistaken the poison for another harmless ingredient. I dared not confess that it was I who had done it, for in my case it would mean trial for first degree murder, while with the doctor it was simply a case of accident, and would blow over in time. The doctor left the Post, a broken-down, ruined man, and died of yellow fever in Cuba not long after. I have kept the secret for twenty-five years, suffering tortures of conscience, but not brave enough to confess. Now, however, I am in the last stages of a fatal disease and cannot live a week longer. By the time this reaches you I shall be gone. Take this confession and publish it to the world, that tardy justice may be done the memory of Dr. Phillips. He was innocent of the whole thing. May God forgive me! George Ingram." The confession was witnessed by two doctors whose signatures appeared under his. "He didn't do it! Tad didn't do it!" The amazed cry rang through the library, as the Winnebagos and Nyoda clutched each other convulsively. "We must bring him back!" said Nyoda, and ran out to the barn to Sherry with the letter in her hand. An hour later Sherry and Hercules sat drinking strong, hot coffee at the kitchen table while Nyoda hastily packed traveling bags for them. Hercules had forgotten all about dying. When he heard the news in the letter he sprang from bed and began dressing with greater speed than he had ever done in his life. The train for New York went in two hours and he and Sherry must catch it if they hoped to reach the steamer before she sailed. There was no way of reaching Tad by telegraph. They did not know what name he was going under, nor the name of the boat on which he was to sail. The only thing they could do was rush to New York, find out which boat was sailing for South America on the first, go on board and search for Tad. Only Hercules would be able to identify him. Hercules rose to the occasion. "We certainly gave Hercules something to make him forget his superstition," said Katherine, sitting down on the sink to collect her thoughts after the meteoric flight of the two men from the house. "We certainly did," said Migwan, trembling with excitement. A racking cough sounded through the house. "Sh, Sylvia's worse," said Migwan, putting her fingers to her lips. "Don't anybody go near her, or she'll notice how excited you are. How on earth does Nyoda manage to keep so calm when she's with her?" "If Sylvia should get pneumonia--" began Sahwah, and then chocked over the dreadful possibility. "If they only bring Mr. Phillips back in time," said Katherine, as if echoing the thing that lay in Sahwah's thoughts. "Don't say such dreadful things," said Hinpoha, with starting tears. "Maybe they won't be able to find him at all," said Katherine dubiously. "They _must_, they _must_," said Sahwah, with dry lips. "They _must_," echoed the others, and hardly daring to think, they entered upon the trying period of waiting. CHAPTER XVII WAITING "How is Sylvia?" Katherine's voice was husky with anxiety. Nyoda looked grave over the tray she was carrying down to the kitchen. "No better yet; a little worse this morning, if anything. Her fever has gone up one degree during the night and she is coughing more than ever." "Is it going to be pneumonia?" asked Katherine steadily, her eyes searching Nyoda's face. "Not if I can help it," replied Nyoda, in a tone of grim determination, the light of battle sparkling in her eyes. Nevertheless, there was a note of worry in her voice that struck cold fear into Katherine's heart, stoutly optimistic as she was. What if Sylvia should die before her father came back? The other Winnebagos, clustering around Nyoda to hear the latest news from Sylvia's bedside, stood hushed and solemn. Nyoda set the tray down on the table and leaned wearily against the door, her eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Instantly Migwan was at her side, all solicitude. "Go, lie down and sleep awhile, Nyoda," she urged. "You've been up nearly all night. I can look after Sylvia for a few hours--I know how. Go to bed now and we'll bring some breakfast up to you, and then you can go to sleep." Putting her arm around Nyoda she led her upstairs and tucked her into bed, smoothing the covers over her with gentle, motherly hands, while the girls below prepared a dainty breakfast tray. "Nice--child!" murmured Nyoda, from the depths of her pillow. "Nice--old--Migwan! Always--taking--care--of--someone!" Her voice trailed off in a tired whisper, and by the time the breakfast tray arrived she was sound asleep. Sylvia also slept most of the time that Migwan watched beside her, a fitful slumber broken by many coughing spells and intervals of difficult breathing. Never had Sylvia seemed so beautiful and so princesslike to Migwan as when she lay there sleeping in the big four-poster bed, her shining curls spread out on the pillow and her fever-flushed cheeks glowing like roses. Lying there so still, with her delicate little white hand resting on top of the coverlet, she brought to Migwan's mind Goethe's description of the beautiful, dead Mignon, in whom the vivid tints of life had been counterfeited by skillful hands. To Migwan's lively imagination it seemed that Sylvia was another Mignon, this child of lofty birth and breeding also cast by accident among humble surroundings, and singing her way into the hearts of people. Would it be with her as it had been with Mignon; would she never be reunited in life with her own people? The resemblance between the two lives struck Migwan as a prophecy and her heart chilled with the conviction that Sylvia was going to die. Tears stole down her cheek as she saw, in her mind's eye, the father coming in just too late, and their beautiful, radiant Sylvia lying cold and still, her joyful song forever hushed. Migwan's melancholy mood lasted all morning, even after Nyoda came back and sent her out of the sick-room, and she sat staring into the library fire in gloomy silence, quite unlike her busy, cheery self. The day crept by on leaden feet. The hands of the clock seemed to be suffering from paralysis; they stayed so long in one spot. Ordinarily clock hands at Carver House went whirling around their dials like pinwheels, and the chimes were continually striking the hour. Now each separate minute seemed to have brought its knitting and come to stay. "No word from Sherry and Hercules yet!" sighed Sahwah impatiently, as the whistles blew half past eleven. "Give them a chance," said Katherine, her voice proceeding in muffled tones from the depths of the music cabinet, which, in order to pass away the time, she had undertaken to set to rights. "They've had plenty of chance by this time to get down on board the boat," returned Sahwah, getting up from her chair and pacing restlessly up and down the room. Sahwah was not equipped by nature to bear suspense calmly; under the stress of inaction she threatened to fly to pieces. Katherine looked up with a faint smile from the heaps of sheet music lying on the floor around her. "Come and help me sort this music," she advised mildly, "it'll settle your mind somewhat, besides giving me a lift. I'm afraid I've bitten off more than I can chew. This is one grand mess of pieces without covers and covers without pieces. You might get all the covers in order for me." Sahwah gazed without enthusiasm upon the littered floor. "Sort music--ugh!" she said, with a grimace and a disgusted shrug of her shoulders. She picked her way to the other end of the library and stood staring restlessly out of the window. It was a dreary, dull day. The Christmas snow had vanished in a thaw, and a chilly rain beat against the window panes with a dismal, melancholy sound. The three boys fidgeted from one end of the house to the other, but could not get up enough steam to go out for a hike. Slim and the Captain drummed chopsticks on the piano, and Justice tried to keep up with them on the harp, until Migwan ordered them to be quiet so Sylvia could sleep, after which they sat in preternatural silence before the library fire, listlessly turning over the pages of magazines which they did not even pretend to read. The atmosphere of the house got so on everybody's nerves that the snapping of a log in the fireplace almost caused a panic. The clock struck twelve, and Migwan, rousing herself from her preoccupation, went out into the kitchen to prepare lunch, aided by Gladys and Hinpoha, while Sahwah continued to pace the floor and Katherine went on nervously fitting covers to pieces and pieces to covers, her ear ever on the alert for the sound of the telephone bell. Justice and Slim and the Captain, grown weary of their own company, trooped out into the kitchen after the girls, declaring _they_ were going to get lunch, and it was not long before the inevitable reaction had set in, and pent-up spirits began to find vent in irrepressible hilarity. Protests were useless. In vain Migwan flourished her big iron spoon and