"I knew all the time there were ghosts here," interrupted Mollie.

"Wearing false faces," added Grace under her breath.

"There are further directions. 'Search and you shall find. I cannot be
more explicit save to say that what is here is well worth years of
endeavor,'" Barbara read on. "'I have a feeling that I shall see the old
place no more. Remember, that to every people its own dead are sacred
and be governed accordingly.'"

Barbara glanced slowly up at the solemn faces above her.

"Is that all?" asked Olive.

"Yes. That is the last entry in the journal, showing that the former Mr.
Presby did not return, as you already have told us that he did not."

"What do you make of it, dear?" questioned Olive thoughtfully.

"It is a clue and a direction to the buried treasure. There can be no
doubt of that."

"Yes, but we don't understand it," spoke up Ruth. "I doubt if we ever
shall."

"It's my opinion that Mr. T. W. P. wasn't in his right mind when he
wrote that," declared Mollie with emphasis. "I think the Indians must
have gone to his head."

"This is no joking matter, Mollie," rebuked Barbara. "Can't you be
serious for once in your life? We must study this."

"What do you say if I send for Mr. Stevens, girls?" cried Olive. "He has
studied this mystery more thoroughly than anyone else and he will no
doubt understand the veiled allusion to the treasure. Suppose we copy it
so we can read it more easily. Wait! I'll get a pencil."

Olive ran downstairs to her room, now not a little excited.

"I've sent Tom after Bob Stevens," she called, as she burst into the
attic on her return. "Now read it to me and I will put it down."

"Perhaps I had better do that," answered Bab, reaching for the pencil.
"I know the writing better than you do and I want to make the copy
exactly like the original. There," she added, after having carefully
copied the extract from the journal.

Olive regarded it perplexedly, Grace, Mollie and Ruth bending over her
shoulder as she read and reread the extract from the old Presby diary.

"I must show this to father and mother," exclaimed Olive suddenly, as
she whisked out of the room with Ruth, Mollie and Grace racing after
her. Barbara, once more absorbed in the journal over which she was
bending with wrinkled forehead, did not seem to realize that she had
been left alone.

"Oh, if it should be true! If it should lead us to the treasure! If we
could save Treasureholme for the Presbys it w