CHAPTER X
CONJECTURES
Mollie Billette set the black iron box down on the log that had formedthe seat for the outdoor girls. A little wind was rapidly drying thedampness. The wind even dried some of the sand on the box, and scatteredit in a little rattling shower on a bit of paper on the beach.
The girls did not seem to know what to say. Betty looked back from herglance across the bay, in the direction of the now unseen boat, in timeto notice Mollie, ever neat, wiping her damp hands on her pockethandkerchief. Amy was looking at the queerly-carved stick which hadserved her as a shovel to dig in the sand.
"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Grace. "Isn't it wonderful! It really is a box!"
"Yes, it's certainly _that_, all right!" added the more practicalMollie.
"And if it should contain treasure!" went on Grace, rather at a lossbecause her chocolates were all gone.
"Old Tin-Back should have found this," commented Mollie.
"Or the boys," spoke Betty. "I wish they were here."
"The idea!" exploded Mollie. "As if we didn't know what to do as well asthough the boys were here to tell us. That isn't our Little Captain; isit, girls?" she asked the others.
"Oh, I only meant about the legal end of it," said Betty, quickly.
"Oh, I see! She just wants--Allen!" remarked Grace.
"No, it isn't that at all!" Betty cried, quickly. "But you know thereare certain rules about things found at sea, or near the sea. Forinstance, if this is above the high-water mark it might be, the propertyof whoever owns the land back there."
"Well, it's above high-water mark all right," declared Amy. "Though Ithink in a heavy blow or at a high tide the water might come up here.But we can't go by rules now; can we, Betty?"
"Oh, I suppose not."
"I'm going to take the box home with us," Mollie declared. "It may havebeen washed ashore from some ship, and there may be nothing in itbut----"
"Tobacco!" exclaimed Grace with a laugh.
"Tobacco?" questioned the others in a chorus.
"It looks just like a tobacco box," the chocolate-loving girl went on."But perhaps it isn't."
"Of course it isn't!" declared Mollie.
"I'm sure it contains treasure," said Amy. "Oh, if it should! Wouldn'tthe old lobsterman be surprised?"
"Well, he wouldn't be the only one to be surprised," spoke Mollie.
"I think we would ourselves," added Betty, with a laugh. "Now, girls,let's see what we really have found."
With a bunch of seaweed Mollie brushed from the box the sand that clungto it. Then the outdoor girls gathered around the case as it rested onthe log.
"Look!" exclaimed Grace as the covering of sand was disposed of. "Thereare some letters on the box."
"So there are!" agreed Betty. They leaned forward to look.
Staring at them from the black top of the box were three white letters.They were rather scratched and faded, but the girls soon made them outas follows:
_B. B. B._
"B-B-B," repeated Mollie, as she read them. "I wonder what they standfor?"
"Base-ball-band," said Grace, quickly. "At least that's what Will wouldsay if he were here."
"I wish some of the boys _were_ here," remarked Betty, and again shegave a quick glance out across the bay.
"Why?" Amy wanted to know.
"Because those men might come back, and----"
"Do you think those men hid the box here?" asked Grace.
"That's exactly what I think," replied Betty, quickly. "Wouldn't that bean explanation of their strange conduct when they saw us?"
"How do you mean?" asked Amy.
"I mean I think those men had just hidden this box here in the sand. Asthey went away they saw us coming along. They were afraid we would findthe box, or at least some of them were, and wanted to come back to digit up again."
"And do you think that was why they quarreled among themselves?"demanded Mollie.
"I think so--yes. Doesn't it seem natural?" Betty asked.
"Well, of course you can make almost any theory fit when you don't knowthe facts," Mollie went on. "But how about the box having been washed upfrom the ocean, and buried in the sand naturally? That could havehappened; couldn't it?"
"Oh, yes," assented Betty. "The box wasn't buried so deep but what itcould have come about in a perfectly natural way. But when you stop tothink how the men acted, and the fact that it was just about here theirboat was, I think my idea is the best."
"Well, it certainly was from here they pushed off their boat," declaredGrace, walking down toward the edge of the water. "See, there are themarks of the keel in the sand."
That was true enough, as all the girls could see. The black box had beenburied in the sand directly back from the point where the men had madetheir departure.
"There's another thing, too," added Betty. "That stick Amy has."
The other girls looked at it, Amy herself regarding it with rathercurious eyes.
"It was stuck in the sand near the box," Amy said. "I worked it loose,pulled it up, and used it as a shovel."
"Exactly what it might have been intended for," spoke Betty, who let alittle note of exultation creep into her voice. "At least, that was oneof the purposes for which it was intended."
"And what was the other?" Mollie asked, as she put back a stray lock ofher dark hair, for the wind had blown it about.
"As a mark," said Betty.
"A mark!" exclaimed Amy.
"Yes," went on Betty. "The men who hid the box put the stake in the sandso they could find their treasure again."
"Oh, then you are sure it _is_ treasure," Mollie returned.
"Well, we might as well think that as anything else--until we get thebox open and find it full of--sand!" declared Betty, laughing.
"Oh, let's open it now!" cried Grace, impulsively. "I'm just dying tosee what's in it. Please let's open it now."
"Perhaps we have no right," objected Amy.
"Why, of _course_ we have," insisted Grace, making "big eyes" at Amy."We found it. Can't we open it, Betty?"
But there was a very good reason why the girls could not open thebox--at least then and there.