At the door of the attic she paused and glanced back at the open trunk, then, walking slowly toward it, deposited her jewel box and armful of silks on the top of the old cedar chest and sat down before the trunk. What strange influence drew her back to it that day Madge could never explain. She knew only that the longing for the love of the father she had never seen, and the mother she could not remember, was strong within her. "What made you leave me when I needed you so?" she murmured, half under her breath. Then she bowed her head on the edge of the trunk and her tears dropped on a little, old-fashioned black velvet coat that had been her mother's. Impulsively Madge caught it up and pressed it to her lips. After a long moment she laid it across her lap and began smoothing it with loving hands, tenderly tracing its lines with her forefinger. As she was about to fold it and lay it in its accustomed place her hand came in contact with something hard in the cuff of one sleeve between the velvet and the satin lining. "What can it be?" she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth. "It feels like a key. If I break two or three stitches, I can pull it out." It was at least five minutes before she managed to make an opening large enough to admit the working out of the little hard object. As she had guessed, it was a small brass key with a bit of faded violet ribbon attached to it. Madge looked curiously at it as it lay in her hand. To whom did the key belong? What did it unlock? Why had her mother sewed it into the sleeve of the black velvet coat? Or had her mother placed it there? The little captain sighed. She could ask endless questions concerning her find, but she could answer none of them. "There may be a box in the trunk which I have overlooked," she reflected. "I never do things thoroughly." Springing from the floor, Madge ran across the attic to where her aunt always kept a pile of brown wrapping paper. Tearing off a strip she carried it to her corner and, laying it on the floor at one side of her mother's trunk, sat down beside it. One by one, with reverent hands, she lifted the various garments from it, piling them over one another on the paper. But when the trunk, bereft of its last article, stood empty before her, she stared in disappointment at the pile of articles at her side. There was nothing in it that bore the slightest resemblance to a box. "It's like 'hunting for a needle in a haystack,'" she mourned. "This key might fit a lock thousands of miles from here. It can't be the key to the trunk; it is too small." She bent forward to examine the lock. "No, the key to this trunk is ever so much larger. Perhaps the trunk has a false bottom!"