"I think," said Amelia, with dignity, "any specialist, if you could only be persuaded to put your case into his hands, would inquire very closely into family traits. And you and I, John, ought to help him by tabulating everything we can." "Sure!" said Raven, relapsing into a vulgarism likely to set her teeth on edge and possibly, in the spasm of it, close them momentarily on reminiscence. "I'm willing to let you in for all I know about Old Crow. To tell the truth, I'm rather proud of him myself." Charlotte was passing through the hall and Amelia called to her. "Charlotte, a minute, please. You know our uncle, Mr. John Raven." "Old Crow, Charlotte," Raven reminded her, seeing she needed prompting, not yet guessing where the question was to lead. Curiously, he thought, it was Milly's exasperating fate to put everybody on guard. But it was inevitable. When you had a meddler in the family, you never knew where you'd have to head her off. "What," continued Amelia, "has become of Uncle John's books?" "His books?" interrupted Raven, himself off the track now, "what the deuce do you want with Old Crow's books?" "Where are they?" Amelia continued, now turning to him. "There's something somewhere--a book--I know it perfectly well--and we've got to have it. It came to me in the night." "What was it?" asked Raven. "Old Crow was rather a bookish chap, I fancy, in a conventional way. I've got some of his stuff up in the hut: rather academic, the kind daguerreotyped young men with high stocks used to study by one candle. What do you suspect--a will, or a love-letter slipped in behind a cover and forgotten? It can't be a will. Old Crow didn't have anything to leave." Amelia's hands trembled a little. A brighter rose had encircled the permanent red of her cheeks. She was, Raven saw with curiosity, much excited. "There was certainly a book," she said, "a mottled blank book a third full of writing. It was a sort of journal. I was in the room when mother brought it from the hut and passed it to father to look at. He'd just come down from your room. You were ill, you know: diphtheria. Mother passed it to him without a word, the way people do when there are children in the room. He looked at it and then at her, and they nodded. I was little, you know, but I saw it was important, and I listened. And father said: 'No, it won't do to have it lying around. I'll carry it up attic and put it in the red chest.' That's what I mean, Charlotte," she continued, turning to Charlotte, who stood with a frown of concentration on her smooth forehead. "You know that old red chest, the one where uncle's book was put." "Oh, yes," said Charlotte. "I know the old chest." "Well," said Amelia conclusively, having made her point, "then you go up attic, will you, and open the chest, take out the blank book and bring it down." "Nonsense!" said Raven. "Charlotte's got her hands full. I'll run up by and by."