"I had made up my mind that I must take you all,--mother and you and Dan,--into my confidence. I told him so. He begged me to wait until the next day and promised that he would tell you then himself. I was beginning to think he might be a little crazy, that there was no hidden treasure."
"I'm sure there is," said Tom. "There was another half of that torn scrap of paper, hidden in one of the cubby-holes of the old cabinet. Dan found it. It's the directions, sure enough, for finding the treasure."
"I don't know; something I fancy, or the Marquis would not have told you as much as he did. But here is the other half. You can tell whether it is part of the paper he showed you."
He drew from his pocket the yellowed bit of paper and spread it on the table before them. Nance bent over and examined it closely.
"I believe it is the other half. See, it is signed ...'ançois de Boisdhyver'. I remember perfectly that the signature of the other was missing, except for the letters 'F-r-' It is, it must be, François de Boisdhyver, who, the Marquis says, was my father. Then look! here are the words '_trésor', 'bijoux et monaie_'. I remember in the other there were phrases that seemed to go with these--'_trésor caché' 'lingots d'or_'. Ah! do you suppose there really is a fortune hidden away in the Inn all these years?"
"Yes, I think so," said Tom. "And I feel certain you have some claim to it, or they wouldn't have made such an effort to involve you in their plot. But, please, Nance, tell me the rest. You got to the night of your disappearance."
"It was a horror--that night!" exclaimed Nancy. "It must have been about twelve that the Marquis came and tapped at my door. For some reason I was restless and had not gone to bed. I slipped out into the hall with him and we came in here to talk. He begged me to make one more expedition with him to the Oak Parlour. But I refused--I insisted that I must tell Dan. Suddenly, Tom, without the slightest warning, I felt my arms pinioned from behind, and before I could scream, the Marquis himself had thrust a handkerchief in my mouth, and I was gagged and bound. Everything was done so quickly, so noiselessly, that not a soul in the house could have heard. They carried me out of the Inn and into the avenue of maples. From there on I was forced to walk. We went to the beach. I was put into a small boat and rowed out to the schooner, and there they locked me up in the little cabin in which you found me."