there's no danger of their getting out, and you can't be too careful
about such things. Suppose, now, that one of those mountain rats that
are always prying around, getting into every crack and crevice that
they can wedge themselves into--suppose one of them had come into the
house, and crept out again with a lot of matches--they'll eat
anything--and suppose that rat went through the rubbish pile and
rubbed against--"

But this line of reasoning proved too much for Jessie, who, with good
cause, prided herself upon her housekeeping.

"There isn't a hole big enough for a rat to crawl through in the
house!" she declared, with some warmth.

The rooms were all lathed and plastered. Mrs. Horton looked around.
"One might come in at a window," she suggested, with less confidence.

Knowing the truth, and having in my possession the means of proving
it, if need be, I took a somewhat wicked pleasure in this game of wild
conjecture. It was, at all events, a satisfaction to be able to veto
this last proposition.

"There were only two windows open, Mrs. Horton, and they were open
only a few inches at the top," I said.

"A rat might climb up the side of the window, and come in that way,"
was the reply to this. "But"--her face suddenly brightening as a new
solution of the mystery flashed upon her mind--"I don't think it was a
rat, after all, and I'll warrant I know now just how it happened. Last
night was Wednesday night, you know, and they always have those
dancing-parties out at Morley's tavern, beyond the Eastern Slope, of a
Wednesday night. Lots of those Crusoe miners go to them, and they all
smoke. Now what'll you chance that as one of them was coming
home--they have to go right past here--he didn't light a match for his
cigar, and when he was through with it, fling the match right down
against the house, or, maybe, he threw the stub of a cigar down?"

"It might be, I suppose," Jessie admitted, rather reluctantly. She was
evidently disposed to abide by her own theory of reviving embers and
falling sparks.

"Oh, I'm well-nigh sure, now that I think of it, that that was the way
it happened," Mrs. Horton insisted, pausing to brush Ralph's damp
curls back from his forehead. "You see, I wouldn't feel so positive
that it was done in just that way if it wasn't for an experience that
we had, here in the valley a long spell ago."

"You refer to the time when the great forest was burned?" Jessie
inquired rather absently. She had