f leaves, extended in rough symmetry above him,
and one big limb, reaching out toward the house, came close to
Laura's windows. Triumph shown again from the shrewd countenance
of the sleuth: Laura must have slid the ledger along a wire into a
hollow branch. However, no wire was to be seen--and the shrewd
countenance of the sleuth fell. But perhaps she had constructed a
device of silk threads, invisible from below, which carried the
book into the tree. Action!

He climbed carefully but with many twinges, finally pausing in a
parlous situation not far from the mysterious window which Laura
had opened the night before. A comprehensive survey of the tree
revealed only the very patent fact that none of the branches was
of sufficient diameter to conceal the ledger. No silk threads came
from the window. He looked and looked and looked at that window;
then his eye fell a little, halted less than three feet below the
window-ledge, and the search was ended.

The kitchen window which his mother had opened was directly
beneath Laura's, and was a very long, narrow window, in the style
of the house, and there was a protecting stone ledge above it.
Upon this ledge lay the book, wrapped in its oil-skin covering and
secured from falling by a piece of broken iron hooping, stuck in
the mortar of the bricks. It could be seen from nowhere save an
upper window of the house next door, or from the tree itself, and
in either case only when the leaves had fallen.

Laura had felt very safe. No one had ever seen the book except
that night, early in August, when, for a better circulation of
air, she had left her door open as she wrote, and Hedrick had come
upon her. He had not spoken of it again; she perceived that he had
forgotten it; and she herself forgot that the memory of a boy is
never to be depended on; its forgettings are too seldom permanent
in the case of things that ought to stay forgotten.

To get the book one had only to lean from the window.

* * *

Hedrick seemed so ill during lunch that his mother spoke of asking
Doctor Sloane to look at him, if he did not improve before
evening. Hedrick said meekly that perhaps that would be best--if
he did not improve. After a futile attempt to eat, he courteously
excused himself from the table--a ceremony which made even Cora
fear that his case might be serious--and, going feebly to the
library, stretched himself upon the sofa. His mother put a rug
over him; Hedrick, than