Mr. Alden was out on the grounds when his grandchildren spotted him. They couldn’t wait to tell their grandfather about the map.
Watch dashed over from the garden to greet the children.
“Watch has been whining for you children to come outdoors all morning.” Mr. Alden called out. “I’m afraid he finds gardening rather dull. You probably have something far more exciting for him.”
“We sure do, Grandfather,” Benny said. “We found a map in an old book. We’re going on a treasure hunt. The greenhouse is where it starts.”
“That’s right over there,” Grandfather pointed. “Only it’s not really a greenhouse anymore but the skeleton of one.”
The children went inside the empty framework. Anyone could see there wasn’t anything hidden or secret about where they were standing.
“Let’s go to the next place on the map,” Benny suggested.
“That’s the stable we saw in the picture,” Jessie said. “Let’s take a look.”
The children skipped over to an old building not far from the greenhouse. There were several empty horse stalls inside, but that was all.
Benny’s face fell.
“Let’s walk back and forth to see if the floor sounds hollow any place,” Henry suggested when he saw Benny’s disappointment. “You never know. There might be a secret passage that leads someplace.”
The children walked in small steps. If there was a secret trap door they were going to find it. Benny walked up and down the length of the stable. There was nothing.
“Come on, buddy,” Henry said. “Let’s go to the next place on the map.”
Jessie began to wonder if the map was not a treasure map at all. She felt sorry for Benny. She knew he was counting on an adventure today. That’s when she got one of her good ideas.
“We’ll make our own treasure hunt,” Jessie told Benny. “Violet and I will run ahead and hide some treats for you and Henry to find. Meet us back here in about twenty minutes. We’ll give you back the map, and you and Henry can follow it. What do you think of that?”
“I think the treasures should be something to eat!” Benny suggested. “We couldn’t eat that old violin anyway.”
While they waited, Henry and Benny decided to see what Grandfather was doing. When they returned to the garden they were surprised to see him with Mr. Tooner.
“Is your treasure hunt over already, boys?” Mr. Alden asked. “I don’t see you carrying a bag of gold! Well, come see how a professional gardener does things. Do you mind, Mr. Tooner?”
Mr. Tooner went about his work without greeting the boys. “Now the first thing you do with a lilac bush is you look for the old wood,” he said gruffly. “That’s what you cut — like this.” Mr. Tooner snapped off a branch with his pruning scissors.
“Henry, why don’t you give it a try?” Mr. Alden suggested.
Henry took the scissors from Mr. Tooner and started to cut.
“Nope. Not that high, my boy. Cut it right down to the ground,” Mr. Tooner explained. “That’s the way.”
Mr. Tooner supervised the boys as they took turns. “Now you don’t want to hack a growing thing like this the way some people do. You cut some of the old growth — not all of it, mind you — to make way for the new. Now you folks can do the rest.”
Mr. Alden and his grandsons watched Mr. Tooner slowly walk back to the castle.
“Well, boys, I’m glad you came along when you did,” Mr. Alden said. “There’s nothing I like better than learning something new from a fine gardener.”
“I thought I didn’t like Mr. Tooner, but now I do,” Benny announced.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mr. Alden said. “I noticed Mr. Tooner always seemed to be around wherever I looked. So I asked him to show me a few things. That’s often a good way to make friends with a stranger.”
Henry pruned some of the other lilac branches. “Did Mr. Tooner talk about Drummond Castle?”
“Just how to properly prune these lilacs,” Mr. Alden said. “Mr. Tooner makes every word count. Not much for chitchat and such. But that’s fine with me. I told him we were only here to help out, and he could teach us how to do what needs doing.”
“I’m glad to know Mr. Tooner is such a good teacher, Grandfather,” Henry said. “I wish he would show me how to play a tune on the fiddle.”
Mr. Alden looked puzzled. Benny explained. “We found a picture of Mr. Tooner at a dance a long time ago. He was holding a fiddle. We think we heard him practicing the other night.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Mr. Alden said. “He’s got fine hands for it. Now where are Jessie and Violet? I think Benny’s had enough of gardening.”
“And not enough of treasure hunting,” Benny agreed. “It seems longer than twenty minutes.”
Henry checked his watch. “It is longer than twenty minutes. Let’s go back to the castle and see what’s holding them up.”
Violet and Jessie were nowhere around when the boys went to the castle. Carrie said the girls had come in to get a bag of hard candy and two flashlights, and had then run off again.
“Here’s a flashlight for you boys,” Carrie said.
Benny took the flashlight from Carrie. “Where were the girls going that they might need one?” he asked.
“Let’s check upstairs,” Henry suggested. “They might still be here getting their jackets or something.”
There was no one in the girls’ room.
“Maybe we can see them from up here,” Henry suggested. He took the binoculars and looked out from the tower. “Nope, all I see is Sandy Munson driving the Jeep up the hill. Let’s go out and see if Jessie and Violet went back to the greenhouse.”
“Okay,” Benny agreed. “Why are you taking Jessie’s hat, Henry?”
“Maybe Watch can catch Jessie’s scent and follow the girls.”
Benny liked this idea very much. On the way to the greenhouse, the boys took one last look back at the castle. Maybe the girls were playing a game of hide-and-seek with them.
“Henry! Look up at that window.” Benny pointed to the rose window over the front door. “It’s moving!”
Indeed there seemed to be someone looking out from the center of the round stained glass window where the painted knight was supposed to be.
Henry grabbed Benny’s hand and raced back to the door.
“Shucks!” Benny said when they got closer. “I guess it was just somebody going by in that room.”
“I guess so,” Henry agreed. “Let’s ask Carrie about getting into it sometime. There’s something strange about that window.”
When the boys got to the stables, Watch raced toward them. When he sniffed Jessie’s bright red cap, he wagged his tail eagerly.
“Go find Jessie, boy,” Henry said.
Watch put his nose to the ground. Then he went right inside the stable and stood under a window. There on a windowsill was a wrapped piece of candy.
“Good boy, Watch!” Benny cried when he saw the candy his sisters had left for him. “This is more fun than following any old map.”
It sure was. With another sniff of Jessie’s hat, Watch led Henry and Benny to a toolshed. Lo and behold, there was a wrapped candy waiting right up on a shelf next to an old toolbox.
“The girls can’t be too far ahead,” Henry said. “Watch is a better guide than a map any day.”
The boys were sure they would catch up to their sisters very soon. Watch led them to the next stop, a pretty ironwork summerhouse with a bench inside.
“Grape!” Henry announced as he unwrapped a purple candy.
“Look, Henry, they even left a dog biscuit for Watch!” Benny said in amazement.
Benny waited while Watch finished his munching and crunching. Then Benny gave him Jessie’s hat to sniff again. “I like this treasure hunt!” he told Henry.
Watch ran ahead of the boys. He stopped in front of an old blue door built into the hillside. They had never noticed it before because it was partly hidden by bushes.
Henry turned the doorknob. The door didn’t budge.
“They can’t have gone in here,” Henry told Benny. “The door is locked tight.”
“Tell that to Watch,” Benny laughed. “He keeps walking back and forth in front of this door.”
The boys pulled and pushed, then turned and twisted the rusted iron doorknob. Nothing happened.
“Watch must be wrong,” Benny said.
Henry put Jessie’s hat under Watch’s nose again. “Find Jessie, boy.”
Again Watch paced back and forth in front of the door.
“Let’s go back to where we started at the greenhouse,” Henry suggested. “Maybe the girls are back by now. Or maybe they went another way when they couldn’t get this door open.”
This time the boys took the path along the cliff. They looked down to see if their sisters had gone to the lake. When they passed the entrance to the footpath, Watch dashed down the steps.
“Watch! Watch!” Henry called out.
Watch kept right on going.
“We’d better follow him,” Henry told Benny.
The boys could hear Watch sniffing ahead of them. Finally he stopped right in front of the gate to the cave.
“Henry! Benny! Here we are,” Jessie cried, peering out when her brothers got close. “We’re in here.”
Henry pulled at the gate. “What? How did you get in here? It’s locked.”
“I know it’s locked,” Jessie began. “Open it with that big key, and we’ll tell you about our adventure.”
Henry and Benny looked at each other with surprise.
“What key?” Henry asked. “We don’t have any key.”
Now the girls were surprised.
“Didn’t you find the key we left hanging by the blue door? We left it there with a few candies so you would notice it and follow us into that end of the cave. Now we’re locked in.”
“We didn’t notice any candies or any key,” Benny said in a shaky voice. He didn’t like seeing his sisters behind the locked gate.
Jessie tried not to get nervous. “We put the key back and locked the door behind us. Then we followed the cave until we got here. Go back and see if the key fell on the ground.”
Henry raced off while Benny waited with his sisters. “Is it spooky in there?” he asked in a very small voice.
Violet smiled at Benny. “It is a little spooky. The cave twists and turns a long, long way under the cliff until it stops here. Jessie and I were glad that Carrie gave us flashlights when we went back for the candy. She’s the one who told us about the key. It probably opens this gate, too.”
Henry came back all out of breath. “The key and the candy are gone!”
“They are?” Jessie asked. “Why, we put the key right back! I know we did. Who could have taken it?”
“Someone must have been watching us, Jessie,” Violet said. “Someone who wanted us to get locked in. But who?”
“We’ll have to find that out,” Henry said. “But first I have to get you free. In the tool shed I found this metal cutter to break the lock. We’ve all had enough adventure for today.”
“That’s for sure,” Benny agreed.
Henry worked away at the old lock until he was able to pull it apart. As soon as the gate opened, Watch went up to the two girls and licked them over and over.
“There, there, boy, it wasn’t so bad,” Violet said.
All the same she waited outside while Henry and Benny took a few steps inside the cave to see what it was like.
“We’ll have to come back with a bigger flashlight,” Henry said. “First I want to find out what happened to that key and who sent us on this wild goose chase with this useless map.”
“You mean a dog chase, don’t you, Henry?” Benny asked. “Not a goose chase.”
Everyone laughed at Benny’s good joke.
“Too bad we didn’t find any treasures,” Jessie said to Benny.
“But we did!” Benny said. “You and Violet were the treasures!” |