d Kittie, dancing furiously and nodding her head
like a demented monkey. "To-morrow,----want to go?"

The girls had all collected by this time around the boisterous pair, and
Bea flapped her sewing warningly, as Kat came whizzing down the
bannisters for a final time, and landed with a dexterous jump, in the
middle of the group.

"I'm going down town," said Ernestine, after hearing of the near and
great event. "I can't go."

"Of course not," said Kittie, with great scorn. "You'd rather go down
town, and be all the afternoon buying a shoe string, than get a Saratoga
trunk full of nuts; but you'll want some of mine this winter."

Olive was busy on a picture, Bea had some sewing, so the twins must
represent the Dering family, and accepted the matter quite blissfully,
to judge from the way they raced off for parts unknown, and remained
absent for some time, as if strange and wonderful preparations were
necessary, and being undergone for to-morrow. They came back when the
tea-bell rang, at least Kittie did, slowly and solemnly through the back
yard, and lingered several minutes on the porch, with many mysterious
signals to some one, down where the long yard sloped to the pond, and a
fringe of willows shaded the water.

"Where's Kathy," inquired Ernestine, who strongly objected to the
extremely abbreviated form of 'Kat.'

"Down at the pond, she's coming," answered Kittie, with a strangely
worried look; but Ernestine flitted by without noticing it, and pretty
soon Kittie quit leaning over the lattice and went in slowly.

Just as Mrs. Dering was leaving her room to go down to tea, she heard a
peculiarly suspicious noise out in the back hall, unmistakably the
careful opening of a window, as of someone on the low roof without, and
pausing to listen, Mrs. Dering became convinced, that someone was surely
making entrance to the house in that questionable manner. A midnight
burglary was a rare occurrence in Canfield, but one in the early fall of
evening, was beyond imagination, and yet Mrs. Dering was conscious of a
little trepidation, as she tiptoed her way round to the back hall, and
fancy pictured a man, with sly intent, coming over the window-sill.
Whoever the intruder was, he was working with great care, and wholly
unconscious of any one's approach, for when Mrs. Dering reached the
corner and peeped around, the intruding head was just leveled, and
coming through, carefully followed by a nimble body, but not clothed in
the