ou frightened about?"

Leslie shivered. "Oh, the whole thing strikes me as too uncanny for
words! Some one has been in here and left that warning. They may be
around here now, for all you know. Who do you suppose it can be?"

"I've a very good notion who it was, but it's too chilly to explain it
standing here. Go over to the house with Rags and I'll be there directly.
I want to go back a moment."

"Phyllis, Phyllis, _don't_ go back there again!" implored Leslie, almost
beside herself with an alarm she could hardly explain. "What do you want
to do?"

"Never mind! Go back! I'll be there in two minutes." And tearing herself
from Leslie's grasp, Phyllis ran back into the dark bungalow.

But Leslie would not return to her own house and desert her companion,
though she could not bring herself to enter again that fear-inspiring
place. So she lingered about outside in a state of unenviable desperation
till Phyllis once more emerged from the dark doorway.

"So you couldn't leave me, after all!" Phyllis laughed. "Well, come back
to bed now, and I'll tell you all about it."

They were chilled through with the drenching mist by the time they
returned, and not till they were enveloped in the warm bed-clothing did
Phyllis deign to explain her ideas about the newest development in their
mystery.

"You were mightily scared by that little piece of paper, and I confess
that I was startled myself, for a minute. But after I'd thought it over,
it suddenly dawned on me that there was precious little to be scared
about, and I'll tell you why. I'm perfectly convinced that that thing was
written and placed there by my brother _Ted_!"

Leslie sat up in bed with a jerk. "You can't possibly mean it!"

"I certainly do, and here's my reason: You yourself convinced me, earlier
this evening, that there was a chance of Ted's being mixed up in this
thing somehow. I can't imagine how he got into it--that's a mystery past
my explaining. But it looks very much as if he knew this Eileen, and that
he was poking around here this afternoon while we were away. Now he
suspects that _we_ are mixed up in it, too, for he saw us come out of the
bungalow that day. Well, if Eileen has told him about the Dragon's Secret
and its disappearance, perhaps he thinks we know what happened to it. At
any rate, he's taken the chance, and written this warning for our
inspection the next time we happened in. He thinks it will scare us, I
suppose! He'll presently find ou