Miss Camilla gave her a grateful glance. Greatly as she wished to be alone with this message left her by a brother whose fate she did not dare to guess, yet she was too courteous to dismiss these two girls who had done so much toward helping her solve the problem. And she was more appreciative of Doris's thoughtful suggestion of departure than she could have put into words. "Thank you, dear," she replied, "and come again tomorrow, all of you. Perhaps I shall have--something to tell you then!" And with many a backward glance and much waving of hands, they took their departure across the fields. * * * * * It was with the wildest impatience that they waited for the following afternoon to obey Miss Camilla's behest and "come again." But promptly at two o'clock they were trailing through the pine woods and the meadow that separated it from the Roundtree farmhouse. "Do you know," whispered Sally, "crazy as I am to hear all about it, I almost dread it, too. I'm so afraid it may have been bad news for her." "I feel just the same," confided Doris, "and yet I'm bursting with impatience, too. Well, let's go on and hear the worst. If it's very bad, she probably won't want to say much about it." But their first sight of Miss Camilla convinced them that the news was not, at least, "very bad." She sat on the porch as usual, knitting serenely, but there was a new light in her face, a sweet, satisfied tranquillity that had never been there before. "I'm glad you've come!" she greeted them. "I have much to tell you." "Was it--was it all right?" faltered Doris. "It was more than 'all right,'" she replied. "It was wonderful. But I am going to read the whole thing to you. I spent nearly all last night deciphering the letter,--for a letter it was,--and I think it is only right you should hear it, after what you have done for me." She went inside the house and brought out several large sheets of paper on which she had transcribed the meaning of the mysterious message. "Listen," she said. "It is as wonderful as a fairy-tale. And how I have misjudged him!" "'My beloved sister,'" she read, "'in the event of any disaster befalling us, I want you to know the danger and the difficulties of what we have undertaken. It is only right that you should, and I know of no other way to communicate it to you, than by the roundabout means of this military cipher which I am using. You are away in Europe now, and safe, and Father intentionally keeps you there because of the very dangerous enterprise in which we are involved. Lest any untoward thing should befall before your return, we leave this as an explanation.