broken window and the overturned
chair. That the unknown had got up-stairs was almost impossible. He
had not used the main staircase, there was no way to the upper floor in
the east wing, and Liddy had been at the window, in the west wing,
where the servants' stair went up. But we did not go to bed at all.
Sam Bohannon and Warner helped in the search, and not a closet escaped
scrutiny. Even the cellars were given a thorough overhauling, without
result. The door in the east entry had a hole through it where my
bullet had gone.

The hole slanted downward, and the bullet was embedded in the porch.
Some reddish stains showed it had done execution.

"Somebody will walk lame," Halsey said, when he had marked the course
of the bullet. "It's too low to have hit anything but a leg or foot."

From that time on I watched every person I met for a limp, and to this
day the man who halts in his walk is an object of suspicion to me. But
Casanova had no lame men: the nearest approach to it was an old fellow
who tended the safety gates at the railroad, and he, I learned on
inquiry, had two artificial legs. Our man had gone, and the large and
expensive stable at Sunnyside was a heap of smoking rafters and charred
boards. Warner swore the fire was incendiary, and in view of the
attempt to enter the house, there seemed to be no doubt of it.

CHAPTER XXIV

FLINDERS

If Halsey had only taken me fully into his confidence, through the
whole affair, it would have been much simpler. If he had been
altogether frank about Jack Bailey, and if the day after the fire he
had told me what he suspected, there would have been no harrowing
period for all of us, with the boy in danger. But young people refuse
to profit by the experience of their elders, and sometimes the elders
are the ones to suffer.

I was much used up the day after the fire, and Gertrude insisted on my
going out. The machine was temporarily out of commission, and the
carriage horses had been sent to a farm for the summer. Gertrude
finally got a trap from the Casanova liveryman, and we went out. Just
as we turned from the drive into the road we passed a woman. She had
put down a small valise, and stood inspecting the house and grounds
minutely. I should hardly have noticed her, had it not been for the
fact that she had been horribly disfigured by smallpox.

"Ugh!" Gertrude said, when we had passed, "what a face! I shall dream
of it to-night. Get up, Flinde