The Mysterious Code

don’t know... the
rope seems slack.... I just don’t know, Trixie,” Brian said and began slowly to
pull the rope back. Soon he held up a dangling frayed end.
    “It broke!” Brian
said, despair choking his voice. “Jim’s out there someplace, and he can' t find
his way back!”
    Frantically they
both shouted with all their strength, “Jim! Jim! Jim... Jim!”
    The angry wind,
triumphant, threw their voices back to them in a ghoulish echo.
    “I’ll go after him,”
Brian said, throwing the rope from him.
    “You’ll do nothing
of the sort!” Trixie said. “You’d just get lost, too. There must be some
way, Brian... some way! Couldn’t we make a loud noise? A horn, maybe...
that’s silly; there isn’t any.... One of those old pans Mr. Maypenny left here
for feeding... I could beat on that.... No, I know what I’ll do!”
    Trixie was across
the room in a flash and up the narrow ladder in the closet that led to the
bell.
    Once at the top, she
swung the bell in its cradle. Back and forth, back and forth.
    Clang! Cling-clang! Clang!
Clang! “Jim! Jim!— Jim!—Jim!—Jim!— Jim!”
    “Hallooooo!”
    Was it the wail of
the wind?
    “Hallooooo!”
    No. It was Jim!
    Covered with snow,
even on his eyelids, Jim stumbled through the door and dropped an armload of
wood on the floor.
    “It’s—not—very—far,”
he said, panting. “A big— pile of it—but the rope broke. How did you happen to
think about ringing the bell?” he asked, a smile breaking over his frosted,
reddened face.
    “We didn’t at
first,” Trixie confessed. “I don’t know why we didn’t. We thought of beating
pans and things; then suddenly we remembered the bell.” Jim had recovered his
breath. “Start a fire going with this wood I’ve brought, Brian,” he said. “In a
few minutes I’ll go out after some more.”
    “No, you start the
fire. I’ll go out this time,” Brian said.
    Jim shook his head.
“I know where the woodpile is, Brian. You don’t. At least, I know the direction
to start. It’s pretty close to the schoolhouse. If the noise of the storm
hadn’t been so loud—Keep ringing the bell if I don’t come back soon.”
    In spite of Brian’s
protest, Jim tied the rope around his waist and started back. Trixie had
doubled the rope so that if one strand broke, the other might hold. This time,
too, it was she who took up the post outside the door. Brian built the fire.
    Back and forth Jim
went successfully until a heap of wood stood inside the door. When the small
wood stove burned bright and the red isinglass in the window on its door sent a
rosy light into the darkened comers, the small schoolhouse seemed cozy and
warm.
    “Nine o’clock,”
Trixie said and loosened Jim’s wristwatch to give it back to him. “Brian, I wish we had some way to let Moms know we are safe. She’s alone at the house with
Bobby and Mart. I hope Mart doesn’t get the idea of starting out to look for
us. Moms wouldn’t let him, though. I wish Daddy were home.”
    “That’s what bothers
me most of all,” Brian said. “The wind seems to have slackened. Don't you think
I’d better make a run for it?”
    “No!” Jim’s voice
was stem, decisive. “No one in this place is going to leave tonight.”
    “You don’t need to
be so commanding,” Brian said. “You know how Moms will worry.”
    “Of course I do,”
Jim said, “and I know that my mother is worrying, too, and Honey, but there
isn’t a thing they can do or we can do until daylight. My dad’s in the city,
too. I know this, though, and you should know it, too. Your mother and my
mother have confidence in us and will be pretty sure we can take care of
ourselves and Trixie.”
    “She won’t know it, though,” Trixie said, tears coming unbidden to her eyes, “and Moms is so good to us. She’ll be afraid we don’t have anything to eat.”
    “We don’t,” Brian
said, glad to change the subject before Trixie broke down. “Let’s look into the
birdseed situation. If it’s for the birds, it could be for us, too.”
    “Sure,” Jim said.
“I’ll go get some snow to melt on top of the stove, and, Trixie, you stir up a
delicious porridge with some of the latest thing in cereal—birdseed.”
    “We’ll pretend it’s
one of Moms’s casseroles.” Trixie, never sad for long, entered into the game.
“I’m stirring up chicken and noodles,” she said, setting a scrubbed pan on the
stove and stirring the birdseed into the water. “Can’t you smell the