ing with you before you saw me.
Something makes me credit it--a strange little notion that I have
carried that child's picture in my own mind."

"We are even, then," I answered, "only you are thinking more things than
you say. That isn't fair."

But she only nodded her head inscrutably.

CHAPTER XXVI

A LITTLE MYSTERY IS SOLVED

The significance of Miss Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran
through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that
night. After a third defeat this thread seemed to guide me to daylight
from a tortuously winding cavern. At first the thing was of an amazing
simplicity.

In a far room was a chest filled with forgotten odds and ends that had
come back with me years before. I ran to it, and from under bundles of
letters, old family trinkets, a canteen, a pair of rusty pistols, and
other such matters, I brought forth an ambrotype--the kind that was
mounted in a black case of pressed rubber and closed with a spring.

But even as I held the thing, flushed with my discovery, another
recollection cooled me, and the structure of my discovery tumbled as
quickly as it had built itself. Little Miss had found her own picture
when she found _him_. Her mother had told me this definitely. It had
been clutched in his hands, and she, after a look, had tenderly replaced
it to stay with his dust forever. This I had forgotten at first, in my
eagerness for light.

I pressed the spring that brought the face to my eyes, knowing it would
not be her face. Close to the light I studied it; the face of a girl,
eighteen or so, with dreaming eyes that looked beyond me. It could not
be Miss Lansdale, and yet it was strangely like her--like the Little
Miss she must once have been.

But one mystery at least was now plain--the mystery of my own mind
picture. I had not looked at this thing for ten years, but its lines had
stayed with me, and this was the face of my dreaming, carried so long
after its source had been forgotten. The face of this picture had
naturally enough changed to seem like the face of Miss Lansdale after I
had seen her.

Perhaps it was the face of a Peavey; there was at least a family
resemblance; that would explain the likeness to Miss Kate. This was not
much, but it was enough to sleep on.

As I left the house the following morning, Miss Lansdale, her skirts
pinned up, was among her roses with a watering pot and a busy pair of
scissors.

As I approached her I h