The Secret MarkAn Adventure Story for Girls
back. Why, of course she will! For the other volume, or to return the one she has. Perhaps to-night. Two volumes were too heavy for those slim shoulders. She'll come back and then she shan't escape me. I'll catch her in the act. Then I'll find out the reason why." 

So great was her faith in this bit of reasoning that she resolved that, without telling a single person about the affair, she would set a watch that very night for the mysterious child and the elusive Shakespeare. She must solve the puzzle. 

That night as she sat in the darkened library, listening, waiting, she allowed her mind to recall in a dim and dreamy way the face and form of the mysterious child. As she dreamed thus there suddenly flashed into the foreground from the deepest depths of her memory the time and circumstance on which she had first seen that child. She saw it all as in a dream. The girl had been dressed just as she was Saturday at midnight. She had entered the stacks. That had been a month before. She had appeared leading an exceedingly old man. Bent with the weight of years, leaning upon a cane, all but blind, the old man had moved with a strangely youthful eagerness. 

He had been allowed to enter the stacks only by special request. He was an aged Frenchman, a lover of books. He wished to come near the books, to sense them, to see them with his age-dimmed eyes, to touch them with his faltering hands. 

So the little girl had guided him forward. From time to time he had asked that he be allowed to handle certain volumes. He had touched each with a reverent hand. His touch had resembled a caress. Some few he had opened and had felt along the covers. "I wonder why he did that," Lucile had thought to herself. She paused. A sudden thought had flashed into her mind. At the risk of missing her quarry, she groped her way to the shelf where the companion to the stolen volume lay and took it down. Slowly she ran her fingers over the inner part of the cover. "Yes," she whispered, "there is something." She dared not flash on the light. To do so might betray her presence in the building. To-morrow she would see. Replacing the volume in its accustomed niche, she again tiptoed to her post of waiting. 

As she thought of it now, she began to realize what a large part her unconscious memory had played in her longing to shield the child. She had seen the child render a service to a feeble and all but helpless old man. Her memory had been trying to tell her of this but had only now broken through into her wakeful mind. Lucile was aroused by the thought. "I 
 Prev. P 7/99 next 
Back Top
Privacy Statement Terms of Service Contact