corrected and nodded in its
direction.

Julia and I had inspected this empty outhouse that morning, and had
decided to have our travelling-cases moved there. As our eyes turned
towards it now, Mrs Ragg came out from it and softly closed the door
behind her.

"This is the Mrs Ragg about whose desirability we disagree," Julia told
the stranger, who, with his hand to his hat, was bowing to us and
moving on. He stopped for a moment, looked at the caretaker, looked
back to us with a smile.

"The mystery is solved. Your Mrs Ragg and mine are not the same
person," he said.

* * * * *

Julia, who had been round to the back of the house to make inspection,
came running to me with the news that the blind was up in the
caretaker's bedroom, and the window open.

"There is a ladder against the outhouse," she said. "You must come and
help me to fix it, Isabella, and stand on the bottom rung while I climb
to the window."

There was no need for such extreme measures, however. Going upstairs to
escape from my sister's importunity, I found the door of the hitherto
locked room invitingly open. This intelligence being communicated to
Julia, she came rushing upstairs, and dragged me unwillingly into Mrs
Ragg's bedroom with her.

A most commonplace, mean-looking room, the wind blowing through it from
open window to open door. The bed still unmade, but the square box of a
place otherwise clean and tidy.

"What a home of mystery!" I said, with fine sarcasm, to Julia. "Where's
your corpse, my dear?"

Julia gazed with great eyes round the little depressing place. "It
really is exactly like," she said slowly. "The bed stood just there.
But on it, you know, Isabella--on it----"

She shuddered, and gripped my arm. "My teeth chatter. Come away," she
said.

She was generous enough to share her confectionery with me, and her
forethought in bringing it was amply justified. Mrs Ragg had been so
much occupied all the morning that she had forgotten to put the chicken
in the oven until she saw us at the gate, she told us.

"Of course we can't put up with this. We will leave to-morrow," Julia
declared. But I, who had paid the caretaker a week's salary in advance,
was of opinion we should have a little more for our money.

"Put the chicken back in the oven, and I will see to the cooking of
it," Julia said, when we had sufficiently contemplated the more than
half-raw carcase of the fowl. "My sister