urs, he would have been home to-day."

She drew a long breath of relief.

"And Aunt Jane?" she asked Hunter, from the head of the attic stairs,
"you do not think she is dead?"

"Not until we have found something more," he answered tactlessly. "It's
like where there's smoke there's fire; where there's murder there's a
body."

When they had both gone, Hunter sat down on a trunk and drew out a cigar
that looked like a bomb.

"What do you think of it?" I asked, when he showed no disposition to
talk.

"I'll be damned if I know," he responded, looking around for some place
to expectorate and finding none.

"The window," I suggested, and he went over to it. When he came back he
had a rather peculiar expression. He sat down and puffed for a moment.

"In the first place," he began, "we can take it for granted that, unless
she was crazy or sleep-walking, she didn't go out in her night-clothes,
and there's nothing of hers missing. She wasn't taken in a carriage,
providing she was taken at all. There's not a mark of wheels on that
drive newer than a week, and besides, you say you heard nothing."

"Nothing," I said positively.

"Then, unless she went away in a balloon, where it wouldn't matter what
she had on, she is still around the premises. It depends on how badly
she was hurt."

"Are you sure it was she who was hurt?" I asked. "That print of a
hand--that is not Miss Jane's."

In reply Hunter led the way down the stairs to the place where the stain
on the stair rail stood out, ugly and distinct. He put his own heavy
hand on the rail just below it.

"Suppose," he said, "suppose you grip something very hard, what happens
to your hand?"

"It spreads," I acknowledged, seeing what he meant.

"Now, look at that stain. Look at the short fingers--why, it's a child's
hand beside mine. The breadth is from pressure. It might be figured out
this way. The fingers, you notice, point down the stairs. In some way,
let us say, the burglar, for want of a better name, gets into the house.
He used a ladder resting against that window by the chest of drawers."

"Ladder!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, there is a pruning ladder there. Now then--he comes down these
stairs, and he has a definite object. He knows of something valuable in
that cubby hole over the mantel in Miss Jane's room. How does he get in?
The door into the upper hall is closed and bolted, but the door into the
bath-room is open. From there another door leads into the bedro