the
cellar steps, Joyce, who was ahead, suddenly exclaimed:

"Why, the door is open! Probably we left it so in our hurry the other
day. We must be more careful after this, and leave everything as we find
it." They tiptoed along the hall with considerably more confidence than
on their former visit, pausing to hold their candles up to the pictures,
and peeping for a moment into the curiously disarranged dining-room.

But they entered the drawing-room first and stood a long while before
the fireplace, gazing at the picture's massive frame and its challenging
wooden back. A heavy, ropelike cord with large silk tassels attached the
picture to its hook, and the cord was twisted, as if some one had turned
the picture about without stopping to readjust it.

"How strange!" murmured Cynthia. But Joyce had been looking at something
else.

"Do you see that big chair with its back close to the mantel?" she
exclaimed. "I've been wondering why it stands in that position with its
back to the fireplace. There was a fire there. You can tell by the ashes
and that half-burned log. Well, don't you see? Some one pulled that
chair close to the mantel, stepped on it, and turned the picture face to
the wall. Now, I wonder why!"

"But look here!" cried Cynthia. "If some one else stood up there and
turned the picture around, why couldn't we do the same? We could turn it
back after we'd seen it, couldn't we?" Joyce thought it over a moment.

"I'll tell you, Cynthia (and I suppose you'll think me queer!), there
are two reasons why I'd rather not do it right now. In the first place,
that silk cord it's hanging by may be awfully rotten after all these
years, and if we touch it, the whole thing may fall. And then, somehow,
I sort of like to keep the mystery about that picture till a little
later,--till we've seen the rest of the house and begun 'putting two and
two together.' Wouldn't you?" Cynthia agreed, as she was usually likely
to do, and Joyce added:

"Now let's see what's in this next room. I think it must be a library.
The door of it opens right into this." Bent on further discovery, they
opened the closed door carefully. It was, as Joyce had guessed, a
library. Book-shelves completely filled three sides of the room. A long
library table with an old-fashioned reading-lamp stood in the middle.
The fourth side of the room was practically devoted to another huge
fireplace, and over the mantel hung another portrait. It was of a
beautiful y