tairs.

"I'm not slandering him," Mrs. McGregor continued, imperturbably
greeting the visitor. "In fact, what I've said about him I'd as lief
say to his face. I'm telling them, laddie," said she, turning brightly
to Hal, "that I have scant opinion of you as a detective."

The big fellow laughed good-humoredly.

"They are not putting me on the Scotland Yard force yet, I must own,"
he admitted. "But how do you know that I won't track down Mr. X yet?
Give me time. No great mystery can be solved all in a minute."

"I've let you sleep on it and so far as I can see you are no better off
this morning than you were last night," was the crisp retort.

"I'm not, and that's the truth," Hal returned, pulling off his coat.
"I'm simply going to bury the matter the way a dog buries a bone, and
then some day I'll dig it up and go to work at it again."

"I guess that's as good a scheme as any," Captain Dillingham declared.
"Sometimes if you do not fuss at a riddle it solves itself. Come, sit
down and talk to us while Nell gets her hair cut. It may help to keep
her quiet."

The child, seated on the table and muffled to her neck in her mother's
apron, brightened.

"Tell story," commanded she. "Hal tell story."

"I? Not on your life!" protested the big fellow in consternation. "I
never told a story in all my days. Your uncle Frederick will tell you
one."

"Uncle Frederick will do nothing of the sort," growled the captain, as
he puffed contentedly at his pipe. "It's Hal who is going to tell the
story. He is going to explain to us exactly what they do with the bales
of cotton when they reach the mill."

"That? Oh, I can tell you that, all right, for I see it done from
morning to night, year in and year out. But I don't call that a story,
do you?"

"It will be a story to us, no matter what it is to you, for remember
that although I have often loaded cotton and carried it hither and
thither round the world I've never seen what became of it after we
thumped it down on the dock."

"Haven't you? That's funny!" smiled Hal. "And yet after all I don't
know as it is, either. How should you know what is done with it? I
shouldn't have if I hadn't happened to spend my days at Davis and
Coulter's. Well, then, as soon as we get the bales we first weigh them
and make a record of each. Then they are opened up and the matted
material is spread out so the coarsest of the dirt, such as leaves,
sand, stems, and bits of dry pods will be loosened