atch the first
steamer for Panama!"

Later, while the baby slumbered and I packed experiment to "Find
Period in middle" explained. This was difficult; not that Bess is
as a general thing obtuse, but because the picture of Aunt Jane
embarking for some wild, lone isle of the Pacific as the head of a
treasure-seeking expedition was enough to shake the strongest
intellect. And yet, amid the welter of ink and eloquence which
filled those fateful pages, there was the cold hard fact
confronting you. Aunt Jane was going to look for buried treasure,
in company with one Violet Higglesby-Browne, whom she sprung on you
without the slightest explanation, as though alluding to the Queen
of Sheba or the Siamese twins. By beginning at the end and reading
backward--Aunt Jane's letters are usually most intelligible that
way--you managed to piece together some explanation of this Miss
Higglesby-Browne and her place in the scheme of things. It was
through Miss Browne, whom she had met at a lecture upon
Soul-Development, that Aunt Jane had come to realize her claims as
an Individual upon the Cosmos, also to discover that she was by
nature a woman of affairs with a talent for directing large
enterprises, although _adverse influences_ had hitherto kept her
from recognizing her powers. There was a dark significance in these
italics, though whether they meant me or the family lawyer I was
not sure.

Miss Higglesby-Browne, however, had assisted Aunt Jane to find
herself, and as a consequence Aunt Jane, for the comparatively
trifling outlay needful to finance the Harding-Browne expedition,
would shortly be the richer by one-fourth of a vast treasure of
Spanish doubloons. The knowledge of this hoard was Miss
Higglesby-Browne's alone. It had been revealed to her by a dying
sailor in a London hospital, whither she had gone on a mission of
kindness--you gathered that Miss Browne was precisely the sort to
take advantage when people were helpless and unable to fly from
her. Why the dying sailor chose to make Miss Browne the repository
of his secret, I don't know--this still remains for me the unsolved
mystery. But when the sailor closed his eyes the secret and the
map--of course there was a map--had become Miss Higglesby-Browne's.

Miss Browne now had clear before her the road to fortune, but
unfortunately it led across the sea and quite out of the route of
steamer travel. Capital in excess of Miss Browne's resources was
required. Lond