he stable-yard of The Trellis House.

At last Miss Pendarth opened the door giving into the garden, and Timmy,
jumping up, hurried down the path toward the house. He then saw that she
held a neat-looking brown paper roll in her hand, and over the roll was
slipped an india-rubber band.

"I thought it a pity to waste a big envelope," she observed, "so I have
done up the newspaper and my note to your mother into a roll. Will you
please ask your mother to put it back exactly as it is now--with the
india-rubber band round it? These bands have become so very expensive.
She need not send it back. I will call for it to-morrow morning about
twelve. Mind you give it to her at once, Timmy. I don't want to have a
thing like that left lying about."

Timmy slipped into Old Place by a back way often used by the young
people, for it was opposite a garden door set in the high brick wall
which gave on to one of the by-ways of the village.

But instead of seeking out his mother, as he ought at once to have done,
he went upstairs and so into what had been the day nursery. There he
locked the door, and having first put Nanna's Bible on the big, round
table, at which as a baby boy he had always sat in his high chair, he
went over to the corner where Josephine was peacefully reposing with her
kittens, and sat down on the floor by the cat's basket.

Very carefully he then slipped the india-rubber band off the roll of
brown paper which had been confided to him by Miss Pendarth. He spread
out the sheet of newspaper, putting aside the brown paper in which it had
been rolled, as also Miss Pendarth's open letter to his mother. And then,
with one hand resting on his cat's soft, furry neck, he read through the
long account of the inquest held on Colonel Crofton's death. As he worked
laboriously down the long columns, Timmy's freckled forehead became
wrinkled, for, try as he might, he could not make out what it was all
about. The only part he thoroughly understood was the description of
Colonel Crofton's last hours; the agony the dying man had endured, the
efforts made by the doctor, not only to save his life, but to force him
to say how the virulent poison had got into his system--all became
vividly present to the boy.

Timmy felt vexed when he realised, as he could not help doing, that Mrs.
Crofton had looked very pretty when she was giving evidence at the
inquest; in fact, the descriptive reporter had called her "the dead man's
beautiful youn