* * * * * A month later a letter came to the Big Half Moon for Father . Jake Wiggins brought it over in his sloop . Father went off by himself to read it , and such a queer-looking face as he had when he came back ! His eyes looked as if he had been crying , but that could n't be , I suppose , because Claude says men never cry . Anyhow , his face was all glad and soft and smiley . `` Do you two young pirates and freebooters want to know what has become of your kite ? '' he said . Then he sat down beside us on the rocks at the Mermaid 's Pool and told us the whole story , and read his letter to us . It was the most amazing thing . It seems Father had had relations after all -- a brother and a sister in particular . But when he was a young man he quarrelled with his brother , who did n't treat him very well -- but he 's been dead for years , so I wo n't say a word against him -- and had gone away from home . He never went back , and he never even let them know he was living . Father says that this was very wrong of him , and I suppose it was , since he says so ; but I do n't see how Father could do anything wrong . Anyway , he had a sister Esther whom he loved very much ; but he felt bitter against her too , because he thought she took his brother 's part too much . So , though a letter of hers , asking him to go back , did reach him , he never answered it , and he never heard anything more . Years afterward he felt sorry and went back , but his brother was dead and his sister had gone away , and he could n't find out a single thing about her . So much for that ; and now about the kite . The letter Father had just received was from his sister , our Aunt Esther and the mother of Dick and Mimi . She was living at a place hundreds of miles inland . Her husband was dead and , as we found out later , although she did not say a word about it in the letter , she was very poor .
One day when Dick and Mimi were out in the woods looking for botany specimens they saw something funny in the top XXXXX a tree .
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