The key of the gate stood in the lock, but was stiff and rusty and creaked as David forced its turning. They hurried along the grassy path, stooping under the low-hanging branches and brushing aside the unpruned shrubs. For some reason they trod more quietly and spoke more softly when they came within the circle of the open lawn. It seemed very breathless and silent in the late afternoon sunlight, this beautiful place with its black, motionless pine trees, its gleaming pool and its empty, ruined house open to the sky. “I wish I understood about all this,” said Betsey, almost under her breath as they stood a moment by the still pool, “why the house was never rebuilt, why Miss Miranda works so hard and looks so worried and so sad.” “There’s something strange about the place,” David agreed, “and Miss Miranda and her father are not like other people. Sometimes she seems to me like a person who sees a great trouble coming nearer and nearer and doesn’t know what to do.” “I wish,” Betsey said with a deep wistful sigh, “oh, how I wish we could help her!” “Perhaps we can,” returned David. He was looking about him intently, as though already deciding what could be done. “I think,” Betsey went on, “that nothing could please me more in the world than to see Miss Miranda lose that worried, frightened look, and to know that she is comfortable and happy again.” David shook his head. “I want more than that,” he declared. “I’m not going to be satisfied until everything is as it was, until this house is rebuilt and they are living here again, safe and peaceful and at home. If we are to help at all, we should work for that. Shall we try?” The ambition seemed to be rather an overwhelming one. To Elizabeth, as she looked about the still garden, sleeping in the level sunshine, it appeared that only something miraculous could awake it into stirring life again. But how much happiness it would bring! She often wondered what that strained look in Miss Miranda’s eyes could mean; she understood now, it was the look of some one who wants to go home. “Yes,” she answered bravely, “we will try.” It was a great undertaking and they shook hands upon it. They did not look very large, those two, under the shadow of the tall pines and of the vast, broken walls, as they stood beside the pool. They seemed, indeed, to be pledging themselves to the following of an impossible purpose. Yet, as Betsey’s firm vigorous hand met David’s hard brown one, suddenly it became a plan that might come true. CHAPTER VI THE BARBARY PIRATES Although there was not much more than an hour of daylight left, the two friends put off their mathematical researches and spent a little time in exploring the ruins of the house. David opened the heavy, charred door of his own refuge and showed Betsey the remains of the room inside with the fragments of a brick staircase that had once wound upward above it.