h she did. It was beautiful in its
simple way: low-ceilinged rooms, many with great beams, and exquisite
oak panelling of linen-fold and other patterns. But the fame of the
Manor, such as it was, lay in its portraits and pictures by famous
artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rosemary frankly
confessed that she knew very little about Old Masters of any age; and
Jim had been, as he said, in the same boat until the idea had struck him
of renewing the past glories of the family place, Courtenaye Abbey.
After renting the Abbey from me, and beginning to restore its
dilapidations, he had studied our heirlooms of every sort; had bought
books, and had consulted experts. Consequently, he had become as good a
judge of a Lely, a Gainsborough, a Romney, a Reynolds, and so on, as I
had become, through being my grandmother's grand-daughter.

I wondered what was in his mind as we went through the hall and the
picture gallery, and began to be so excited over my own thoughts that I
could hardly wait to find out his.

"Well, what is your impression of the famous collection?" I asked, the
instant our car whirled us away from the door of Ralston Old Manor.
"What do you think of everything?"

"_Think_, my child?" echoed Jim. "I'm bursting with what I think; and
so, I expect, are you!"

"I wonder how long it is since the pictures were valued?" I muttered.

"I suppose they must have been done," said Jim, "at the time of old
Ralston's death, so that the amount of his estate could be judged."

"Yes," I agreed; "I suppose the income-tax people, or whoever the fiends
are that assess heirs for death duties, would not have accepted any old
estimates. But that would mean that the pictures were all right ten
months ago."

We looked at each other. "There's been some queer hocus-pocus going on,"
mumbled Jim.

"It sounds like black magic!" I breathed.

"Black fraud," he amended. "Ought we to speak to Murray--just drop him a
hint, and suggest his getting an expert to have a look round?"

"It would worry him, and he oughtn't to be worried now," I said.

"Still, he wants everything to be all right for his wife when he goes
west."

"I know," said I; "but I don't feel that these happy days of his--his
last days, perhaps--ought to be disturbed. If--if Rosemary loves him as
much as we believe she does, she'd rather have a fuss after he's gone
than before. We might be breaking open a wasp's nest if we spoke. And it
isn't our _busi