storm
clears.

Miss Margery was not long in emerging from her handkerchief.

"I didn't sleep much," she explained, dabbing at her eyes, "and I am
nervous, anyhow. Mr. Knox, are you sure it was only Harry trying to get
into the house last night?"

"Only Harry," I repeated. "If Mr. Wardrop's attempt to get into the
house leaves me in this condition, what would a real burglar have done
to me!"

She was too intent to be sympathetic over my disfigured face.

"There was some one moving about up-stairs not long before I came down,"
she said slowly.

"You heard me; I almost fell down the stairs."

"Did you brush past my door, and strike the knob?" she demanded.

"No, I was not near any door."

"Very well," triumphantly. "Some one did. Not only that, but they were
in the store-room on the floor above. I could hear one person and
perhaps two, going from one side of the room to the other and back
again."

"You heard a goblin quadrille. First couple forward and back," I said
facetiously.

"I heard real footsteps--unmistakable ones. The maids sleep back on the
second floor, and--don't tell me it was rats. There are no rats in my
Aunt Letitia's house."

I was more impressed than I cared to show. I found I had a half hour
before train time, and as we were neither of us eating anything, I
suggested that we explore the upper floor of the house. I did it, I
explained, not because I expected to find anything, but because I was
sure we would not.

We crept past the two closed doors behind which the ladies Maitland were
presumably taking out their crimps and taking in their tea. Then up a
narrow, obtrusively clean stairway to the upper floor.

It was an old-fashioned, sloping-roofed attic, with narrow windows and a
bare floor. At one end a door opened into a large room, and in there
were the family trunks of four generations of Maitlands. One on another
they were all piled there--little hair trunks, squab-topped trunks, huge
Saratogas--of the period when the two maiden ladies were in their late
teens--and there were handsome, modern trunks, too. For Miss Fleming's
satisfaction I made an examination of the room, but it showed nothing.
There was little or no dust to have been disturbed; the windows were
closed and locked.

In the main attic were two step-ladders, some curtains drying on frames
and an old chest of drawers with glass knobs and the veneering broken in
places. One of the drawers stood open, and inside could