The Message in the Hollow Oak Read Online Free PDF Page A

very old four-passenger type with no top and had rather narrow wheels.
    Nancy thought, “This should be on exhibit in an antique car museum!”
    The two girls climbed into the back seat and Clem drove off. The old car was amazing. Though the cushions were worn thin and the girls bounced up and down on the rough road, the engine purred along satisfactorily. Clem was a fast driver and did not seem to mind the bumpiness of the ride.
    A few minutes later he turned off the road suddenly and started across a plowed field. The girls held on tightly. Clem pointed to his left.
    “See that little higher section with corn growin’ on it? That was once a dig and they found plenty o’ old Indian bones there.”
    “It certainly doesn’t look like much now,” Julie Anne remarked.
    “That’s right,” said Clem. “Folks is funny. They make such a to-do about takin’ care o’ cemeteries but they sure ain’t got no respect for the skeletons o’ folks that lived around here three or four hundred years ago.”
    Nancy made no comment. She was deep in thought, recalling how carefully the Egyptians of thousands of years ago preserved their mummies.
    Her reflections were interrupted when Clem made a sharp right turn and drove up a slightly hilly section.
    “Was this an Indian gravesite?” Julie Anne asked.
    “I don’t know,” Clem replied. “So far as I’ve heard, nobody has ever come to dig it up.”
    When he reached the top of the incline which had not been cultivated and was covered with coarse grass, he stopped abruptly.
    “Here’s the stump o’ that oak you’re lookin’ for, Nancy,” he said.
    Both girls hopped out of the car and went over to the stump. Nancy turned to Clem. “Where is the tree trunk?”
    He pointed down the slope. Among some bushes lay a giant tree. Nancy hurried down to it. Facing her was a small lead plate embedded in the trunk. On the plate had been etched Père François 1675. Underneath the inscription was an arrow.
    The trunk was hollow but the outer part was still in good condition. The tree that had stood at the top of the slope more than three hundred years ago apparently had been blown over recently.
    Nancy remarked, “I understand that when the tree was standing, the arrow pointed east.”
    Clem chuckled. “Now I just might be able to help you figure out that one.”
    The girls watched him as he walked along the side of the tree, then climbed back to the stump. After two such trips he said, “I reckon from the pattern o’ that stump and the bottom o’ this tree that they fitted together so the arrow pointed due east.”
    “Can you drive us in that direction?” Nancy asked.
    “You never get anywhere if you don’t try,” Clem answered with a chuckle.
    They all climbed into his old car and he set off. Clem continued to drive through farms and woods. Once they forded a stream. But he avoided taking any of the roads, although they had crossed several of them.
    “Roads ain’t much better’n the fields,” he explained with a grin. “Besides, they wind around too much. We can go quicker this way. I’m aimin’ for a nice picnic spot.”
    “That’s good,” said Julie Anne. “I’m starved.” Five minutes later Clem stopped near a stream and they all got out. Julie Anne and Nancy had packed enough lunch for all of them. Clem also started to open a package of food.
    “My wife Hortense,” he said, “makes the best beaten biscuits you ever ate. Then she opens ‘em and puts a little fishball inside. I brought along some of ’em.”
    The girls found the stuffed beaten biscuits delicious and said so. “Please tell your wife they’re great,” Nancy added, “and thanks to you both for supplying part of the lunch.”
    While they ate, Clem told one exaggerated story after another and kept the girls laughing all the time.
    “One more and then we got to go,” he said. “Once there was an Indian fishin’ in the Ohio River. That ain’t a long way from here, you know. He was