"Except her feeling under my piller for her handkerchief," corroborated
Mr. Negget, returning to the sitting-room.

Mr. Bodfish waved them to silence, and again gave way to deep thought.
Three times he took up his pencil, and laying it down again, sat and
drummed on the table with his fingers. Then he arose, and with bent head
walked slowly round and round the room until he stumbled over a stool.

"Nobody came to the house this morning, I suppose?" he said at length,
resuming his seat.

"Only Mrs. Driver," said his niece.

"What time did she come?" inquired Mr. Bodfish.

"Here! look here!" interposed Mr. Negget. "I've known Mrs. Driver
thirty year a'most."

"What time did she come?" repeated the ex-constable, pitilessly.

His niece shook her head. "It might have been eleven, and again it might
have been earlier," she replied. "I was out when she came."

"Out!" almost shouted the other.

Mrs. Negget nodded.

"She was sitting in here when I came back."

Her uncle looked up and glanced at the door behind which a small
staircase led to the room above.

"What was to prevent Mrs. Driver going up there while you were away?" he
demanded.

"I shouldn't like to think that of Mrs. Driver," said his niece, shaking
her head; "but then in these days one never knows what might happen.
Never. I've given up thinking about it. However, when I came back, Mrs.
Driver was here, sitting in that very chair you are sitting in now."

Mr. Bodfish pursed up his lips and made another note. Then he took a
spill from the fireplace, and lighting a candle, went slowly and
carefully up the stairs. He found nothing on them but two caked rims of
mud, and being too busy to notice Mr. Negget's frantic signalling, called
his niece's attention to them.

"What do you think of that?" he demanded, triumphantly.

"Somebody's been up there," said his niece. "It isn't Emma, because she
hasn't been outside the house all day; and it can't be George, because he
promised me faithful he'd never go up there in his dirty boots."

Mr. Negget coughed, and approaching the stairs, gazed with the eye of a
stranger at the relics as Mr. Bodfish hotly rebuked a suggestion of his
niece's to sweep them up.

"Seems to me," said the conscience-stricken Mr. Negget, feebly, "as
they're rather large for a woman."

"Mud cakes," said Mr. Bodfish, with his most professional manner; "a
small boot would pick up a lot this weather."

"So it would," s