provide themselves with means of getting out of it. Shall I help you?"

"In a minute," I said. "I am so curious. How do you suppose they worked
this trap from here? They did not press the spring in the molding."

He pointed to one side of the opening, where part of the supporting
mechanism was now visible.

"They worked that. It is all simple enough on this side of the trap;
the puzzle is about the other. How did they manage to have all this
mechanism put in without rousing any one's attention? And why so much
trouble?"

"Some time I will tell you," I replied, putting my foot on the step.
"O girls!" I exclaimed, as two screams rang out above and two agitated
faces peered down upon us. "I've had an accident and a great adventure,
but I've solved the mystery of the ghost. It was just one of the two
poor old ladies next door. They used to come up through this trap. Where
is Mrs. Packard?"

They were too speechless with wonder to answer me. I had to reach up my
arms twice before either of them would lend me a helping hand. But when
I was once up and Mr. Steele after me, the questions they asked came so
thick and fast that I almost choked in my endeavor to answer them and to
get away. Nixon appeared in the middle of it, and, congratulating myself
that Mr. Steele had been able to slip away to the study while I was
talking to the girls, I went over the whole story again for his benefit,
after which I stopped abruptly and asked again where Mrs. Packard was.

Nixon, with a face as black as the passage from which I had just
escaped, muttered some words about queer doings for respectable people,
but said nothing about his mistress unless the few words he added to his
final lament about the cabinet contained some allusion to her fondness
for the articles it held. We could all see that they had suffered
greatly from their fall. Annoyed at his manner, which was that of a man
personally aggrieved, I turned to Ellen. "You have just been up-stairs,"
I said. "Is Mrs. Packard still in the nursery?"

"She was, but not more than five minutes ago she slipped down-stairs and
went out. It was just before the noise you made falling down into this
hole."

Out! I was sorry; I wanted to disburden myself at once.

"Well, leave everything as it is," I commanded, despite the rebellion
in Nixon's eye. "I will wait in the reception-room till she returns and
then tell her at once. She can blame nobody but me, if she is displeased
at what she