ing party. The Prof and I
followed her.

Oswald was teetering the trunk in the old familiar way, with one ear
fastened to its shiny side.

"It's true! It's true!" he says in hushed tones. "The keys are gone."

"Naughty, naughty!" says Lydia. "Haven't I told you I took them out?"

Oswald went over and set limply down on his bed, while we stood in the
doorway.

"How did you ever do it?" says he with shining eyes.

"It was perfectly simple," says Lydia. "I simply opened it--that's all!"

"I have always suspected that the great secret of life would be almost
too simple when once solved," says the Prof.

"It only needed a bit of thought," says the chit.

Then Oswald must of had a sudden pang of fear. He flew over and examined
the lock and all the front surface of his treasure. He was looking for
signs of rough work, thinking she might of broken into it in some coarse
manner. But not a scratch could he find. He looked up at Lydia out of
eyes moist with gratitude.

"You wonderful, wonderful woman!" says he, and any one could know he
meant it from the heart out.

Lydia was still superior and languid, and covered up a slight yawn.
She said she was glad if any little thing she could do had made life
pleasanter for him. This has been such a perfectly simple thing--very,
very far from wonderful.

Oswald now begun to caper round the room like an Airedale pup, and says
let's have the keys and open the trunk up, so he can believe his own
eyes.

Then Lydia trifled once more with a human soul. She froze in deep thought
a long minute then says:

"Oh, dear! Now what did I do with those wretched old keys?"

Oswald froze, too, with a new agony. Lydia put a hand to her pale
forehead and seemed to try to remember. There was an awful silence.
Oswald was dashed over the cliff again.

"Can't you think?" says the wounded man. "Can't you remember? Try! Try!"

"Now let me see," says Lydia. "I know I had them out in the living
room--"

"Why did you ever take them out there?" demands Oswald in great terror;
but the heroine pays no attention whatever to this.

"--and later, I think--I think--I must have carried them into my room.
Oh, yes; now I remember I did. And then I emptied my wastebasket into the
kitchen stove. Now I wonder if they could have been in with that rubbish
I burned! Let me think!" And she thought again deeply.

Oswald give a hollow groan, like some of the very finest chords in his
being had been tore asunder