The Marshland Mystery

go east or west on it?”
    “I’ll check and see.” Trixie reached into her pocket and kept on pedaling. “I don’t remember.”
    “Neither do I,” Honey admitted with a giggle that broke off suddenly when she saw the look on Trixie’s face as Trixie braked her bike suddenly and felt frantically first in one pocket of her jacket and then the other. “What’s the matter?”
    “The map,” Trixie told her glumly, giving up the search. “Jim didn’t give it back to me. Now what are we going to do?”
     

A Face at the Window ● 5
     
    GLEEPS! I HATE to turn back now, but I suppose we’ll have to.” Trixie leaned dejectedly against her bicycle. “Without that map, we’re sunk.”
    “Maybe there’s some kind of a sign up there where we’re supposed to turn. It just might say ‘Martin’s Marsh,’ in plain English,” Honey suggested. “Let’s get started again, before I notice how tired my legs are!”
    “Good idea!” Trixie agreed hastily. “Mine are getting a bit wobbly, too. They’re sending distress signals to my so-called brain.” Trixie groaned as she settled herself again on the bike. “Let’s go.”
    There were no signs pointing the way to Martin’s Marsh around the corner of Old Telegraph Road. As a matter of fact, there were no signs of any sort, and, except for two or three lines of tire tracks in the soft, sandy dirt, there was no indication that anyone used the old road. Old telegraph poles, some leaning well out °f line, seemed loosely held together by a few slack wires.
    There wasn’t a hint in the quiet solitude of the spot that this road, not so long ago, had been a highway from the river to the rich interior valley. Only a distant humming gave evidence that, not too far away, a great concrete ribbon of throughway stretched for a hundred miles, from city to city.
    “Well, here we are,” Trixie said dismally, “and I suppose that whichever way we decide to go, we’ll be going the wrong way.”
    But Honey, off her bike now, was standing in the middle of the road and sniffing the air with rapturous expression. “M-m-m! I smell violets! Let’s stop right here and pick some.”
    Trixie tilted her pert nose and sniffed. “Smells more like swamp to me,” she said flatly. Then, a moment later, her blue eyes sparkled. “Swamp! Wait a minute!” She ran to stand beside Honey. “Let’s see which way it’s coming from, and we’ll know which direction to go!”
    “Oh, Trixie, you’re a genius!” Honey exclaimed.
    They both stood still and sniffed inquiringly. It took Trixie only a moment to make up her mind. “Nothing from the east,” she announced, then sniffed inquiringly toward the west. “There! That’s it! West!”
    Honey wrinkled her pretty nose and pointed it west. “You’re right! Let’s go!” she laughed.
    A moment later, they were on their way.
    Honey called over to Trixie as they rode. “Can you remember any of the landmarks on the map?”
    “Golly, I don’t think so,” Trixie admitted mournfully. But a couple of minutes later, as they turned a corner, she gave a sudden exclamation and pointed ahead. “Look!
    A big oak split by lightning. Wasn’t there something about that on the map?”
    “Oak—lightning—why, of course! Now I remember!” Honey agreed excitedly. “Brian drew a tree with a big zigzag of lightning hitting it. There was a road beyond it just a little way, I think, where we turn off.”
    “Let’s take a look,” Trixie said eagerly and was on her way before she had finished speaking. Honey was not far behind her as they reached the big oak and went on to look for the turnoff road.
    The smell of the marsh was getting stronger every second, and the road was starting to get rougher and narrower.
    Suddenly Trixie let her bike veer across the dirt toward Honey, and they almost collided. Her eyes were fixed on something deep in among the trees at the side of the road. “Honey! Look! A huge old house!”
    They stopped and stared. At first sight, it had seemed like a whole house, one that a person could live in. But a closer look showed that it was only a shell. Three stories high, with part of its gambrel roof still covering the upper story, it stood in the midst of tall trees and a vast tangle of vegetation.
    “Reminds me of the Frayne house after Jim’s good-for-nothing stepfather accidentally set fire to it,” Trixie said. “Fire can really wreck a place, even when it’s brick and stone.”
    “It seems a shame, ”