Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince matters in her own thoughts.
"Larry stole 'em!" she had concluded from the first. "What's old letters, anyway? But I'll get those letters if I die for it!"
She shamelessly ransacked Larry's possessions while she cleaned his disorderly shack, but no letters did she find. She became irritable and unmoral.
"Lordy!" she confided to Peneluna one day while they were preparing Larry's food, "don't yer wish, Peneluna, that it wasn't evil to poison some folks' grub?"
Peneluna paused and looked at the girl with startled eyes.
"If you talk like that," she replied, "I'll hustle you into the almshouse." Then: "Who would you like to do that to?" she asked.
"Oh! folks as just clutter up life for decent folks. Maclin and Larry."
"Now, see here, Jan-an, that kind of talk is downright creepy and terrible wicked. Listen to me. Are you listening?"
"I'm your best friend, child. I mean to stand by yer, so you just heed. There are folks as can use language like that and others will laugh it off, but you can't do it. The best thing for you to do is to slip along out of sight and sound as much as yer can. If you attract attention--the Lord above knows what will happen; I don't."
"I ain't making them notice me," she mumbled, "but yer just can't take a joke."
Noreen and Jan-an, in those warm autumn days--and what an autumn it was!--often came to the little chapel where Northrup wrote.
They knew this was forbidden; they knew that the mornings were to be undisturbed, but what could a man who loved children say to the two patient creatures crouching at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the church?
Northrup could hear them whisper--it blended with the twittering of the birds--he heard Noreen's chuckle and Jan-an's warning. Occasionally a flaming maple branch would fall through the window on to his table; once Ginger was propelled through the door with a note, badly printed by Noreen, tied to his collar.
"We're here," the strangely scrawled words informed him; "me and Jan-an. We've got something for you."