The Marshland Mystery

latch the gate after them and leave it as they had found it.
    Then she hurried after Honey to their bikes. Mounting quickly, they pedaled off as fast as they could go, without so much as a backward glance.
     

Martin’s Marsh ● 6
     
    IT WAS ANOTHER quarter of a mile to the edge of the swamp, but Trixie and Honey kept pedaling hard until they came to the broken fence that marked the edge of soft ground.
    Trixie glanced back before she braked her bike to a stop, but the cottage was no longer in view. “This looks like it!” she called to Honey, who was close behind her.
    Honey wobbled to a stop, dismounted, and sank down on the grass under a white-blossomed dogwood tree. “Thank goodness! I was about to collapse!”
    Trixie threw herself down beside Honey, groaning. “I couldn’t have gone much farther!” she admitted.
    Honey laughed suddenly. Trixie looked at her in surprise. “Now what’s so funny?” Trixie demanded.
    “Us!” Honey gave a giggle. “Getting panicky and running as if a pack of wolves were after us! Why did we do such a silly thing?”
    “I was scared,” Trixie admitted a bit sheepishly. She clasped her knees and rested her chin on them. “I suppose it was that spooky hand waving us away and then that white face staring at us—just staring!”
    Honey nodded. “It was weird. All I wanted to do was to get away as fast as I could. I was all shivery.”
    “Now I suppose she’ll think we had guilty consciences because we had come to steal her flowers! Maybe we should go back and explain that all we wanted was a drink of water.”
    “Not me!” Honey assured her promptly. “I got over being thirsty.”
    “I suppose the little girl who tends the rosebushes lives there with the old lady,” Trixie said suddenly. “It’s close enough. And maybe the old lady likes roses, and her dear little granddaughter brings them to her in June, and—” Trixie was off on a flight of fancy.
    “And we’ll still be here in June ourselves if we don’t get busy looking for wood sorrel and spearmint and the rest of those plants Brian wrote on the map.”
    “The only one I remember is tansy,” Trixie said with a grin, “and that’s because I remember a very old herb book of my grandmother’s that had a recipe for tansy cakes that were eaten at Easter.”
    “Wonder what they tasted like.” Honey grimaced. “Bitter, sort of,” Trixie told her. “At least, I think that’s what it said. They were taken as a tonic. And the fresh tansy leaves were soaked in buttermilk for nine days, and then the buttermilk was used to bleach freckles.”
    “Ugh! I’d rather have the freckles.” Honey laughed. Trixie sighed. “That’s what you think, because you don’t happen to have any.” Trixie’s freckles, though not nearly so numerous as Mart’s, were an annoyance to her. Her mother always told her they would disappear when she was older, and her father said he thought they were cute, but Trixie had her doubts about both opinions.
    “Anyhow, we’ll gather some violets. I can see oodles of them from here. And look, over there in the distance; aren’t those blue flags?” Honey pointed eagerly.
    “And I see some yellow lady’s slippers over that way.” Trixie nodded in the other direction. She got to her feet and extended a hand to Honey. “Come on, and bring the trowel and the basket from your bike. We’ll get samples of all of them and then have lunch.”
    And a moment later, they were picking their way carefully along a faint path that seemed to lead along the very edge of the swamp.
    But the splashes of color were somewhat farther in than they had seemed from the edge of the swamp. And even when Trixie and Honey reached them and began to choose the strongest and most beautiful of the flowering plants, they saw still others, deeper in the swamp, that promised to be much more spectacular. So they continued to follow a winding path for quite a distance, always led on by the distant sight of more beautiful specimens.
    They both had muddy feet, and the wire basket they had brought was heaped high with many kinds of plants before they decided to stop and check over what they had found.
    “I love these bloodroots,” Honey said. “Do you know that they close when the sun sets and that they’re very delicate, in spite of their big leaves?”
    “Miss Bennett says the Indians used the red sap of the bloodroot to decorate their faces and tomahawks.” Trixie carefully enclosed the wet plant with