The house must have been abandoned decades ago. Its front steps were decomposed into spongy masses that retained the shape of steps without the solidity, its doorless doorway opened darkly into an interior vacant of everything except a few rotted timbers and dust and dirt inches thick. Behind the house, the remnants of a fence enclosed a field littered with rubbish, some of which appeared to be of recent origin.

“That old fart tricked us,” Drew said, and looked accusingly at his eldest brother.

“Seems so,” said Will. “That looks like the town dump.”

Still, because the path led there, they went to have a look, and were surprised to discover freshly cut firewood stacked alongside the decayed fence, Will muttering “Well, holy mackerel and everything other kind of fish, too” when they read a note someone had tacked to a log: “For Aunt Frony. Stay warm this wintir. Jean Frances. Grand Banks. May 25, 1901.”

They fanned out across the cluttered ground, truly a field of rags and bones: a frayed sweater here, a knit cap there, a pair of ladies shoes, other stuff too rotted or rusted to identify, and sometimes, peeking shyly through the green tares, a gravestone that had been set flat into the ground, with an inscription trod and weathered to near illegibility. “In loving memory …” read one fragment. Further on, another—“Ebenezer Reed, Born November 19th, 1731, brother of …” and then nothing but marks as indecipherable as glyphs in a Babylonian tablet. A cemetery and a rubbish heap, but the rubbish wasn’t rubbish: Scattered everywhere were scraps of paper pinned by rocks so they wouldn’t blow away, or by corroded tins of snuff and chewing tobacco. The scraps bore messages, but like the markers’ inscriptions, they had borne too much insult from sun, rain, or frost to be read. Except for two discovered by Eliot, one tied around a metal box of Twining’s tea, the other wrapping a container like the one in Nathaniel’s pocket. The first was from a ship called the Reuben Phillips, departed for Charleston just this past April 9th. “For Aunt Phrony. Grant safe passage to Golden Rocket,” read the second. “Bound for Caracas, May 6, 1901.”

“Ain’t this just something?”—Eliot, hands on his hips, gazing in wonder at the offerings. “Ain’t this just the weirdest something you ever saw?”

“Hey, have a look at this, if you think that’s something,” called Will, who was a little ahead, flattening a clump of tall weeds around a quartet of tombstones. They had been put upright in the ground, and though they now tottered one way or the other, the names and dates and sentiments carved into the slate could be read if you looked closely.

The first said:

“To the memory of Capt. Uriah Reed, born Devon, England, 1727. Reported lost at sea off the coast of Georgia. September 17, 1769. Erected by his loving wife, Sophronia Reed.”

And the next: