The Secret MarkAn Adventure Story for Girls
you think of it. How old they are, four or five hundred years, yet the coloring is as perfect as if they were done but yesterday."

Florence listened eagerly. This was indeed interesting. "You see," smiled the librarian, "in those days nothing much was known of what is now the new world, but from time to time ships lost at sea drifted about to land at last on strange shores. These they supposed were shores of islands. When they returned they related their experiences and a new island was stuck somewhere on the map. The exact location could not be discovered, so they might make a mistake of a thousand or more miles in locating them, but that didn't really matter, for no one ever went to them again." "What a time to dream of," sighed Florence. "What an age of mysteries!"

"Yes, wasn't it? But there are mysteries quite as wonderful today. Only trouble is, we don't see them." "And sometimes we do see them but can't solve them." Florence was thinking of the mystery that thus far was her property and her chum's. "The maps were sometimes bound in thin books very much like an atlas," the librarian explained. "Here is one that is very rare." She indicated a book in a case. The book was open at the first map with the inside of the front cover showing. Florence was about to pass it with a glance when something in the upper outside corner of the cover caught and held her attention. It was the picture of a gargoyle with a letter L surrounding two sides of it. It was a bookmark and, though she had not seen the mark in the missing Shakespeare, she knew from Lucile's description of it that this must be an exact duplicate. "Probably from the same library originally," she thought. "I suppose these charts are worth a great deal of money," she ventured. 

"Oh! yes. A great deal. One doesn't really set a price on such things. These were the gift of a rich man. It is the finest collection except one in America." As Florence turned to pass on, she was startled to see the mysterious child who had escaped from her sight nearly an hour before, standing not ten feet from her. She was apparently much interested in the cherubs done in blue ink on one chart and used to indicate the prevailing direction of the winds."Ah, now I have you!" she sighed. "There is but one door to this room. I will watch the door, not you. When you leave the room, I will follow." 
With the corner of an eye on that door, she sauntered from case to case for another quarter of an hour. Then seized with a sudden desire to examine the chart book with the gargoyle in the corner of its cover, she drifted toward it. 
Scarcely could she believe her eyes as she gave 
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