"It is pretty sure that she has left town and has left no address
behind her. It looks as though she had deliberately tried to
efface herself from the community," said Mr. Broxton Day slowly.
"Are you sure, Janice, that the box cannot be found?"

"Oh, Daddy! I've looked everywhere. Dear Mamma's picture that I
loved so much! And her, diary I"

"More than that, daughter, more than that," said her father, his
own voice breaking. "I should have been more careful about
allowing you to take the box. There was something else--"

"Oh, Daddy! what? I didn't know there was a secret compartment
in the treasure-box," she added wonderingly.

"You would scarcely understand, my dear," he told her with a
heavy sigh. "It was but a shallow place. There were letters in
it--letters which I treasured above everything else in the box.
Letters your Mamma wrote me before you were born, when I was away
from home and she thought she might never see me again. We were
young, then, my dear; and we loved each other very much."

His voice trailed away into silence. The girl, young as she was,
was awed by his grief. She suddenly realized that her own sorrow
over the lost treasure-box was shallow indeed beside her father's
despair.

It was some time later that she told him just how well she had
searched for the missing box. She narrated, too, all the
particulars of the early morning cat episode and the trouble