they discussed and re-discussed it in many a spare
hour when they crouched cozily by themselves over the open fire during
that long winter. It was a wonderful and appealing secret that they
somehow felt was all their own. It was better, more interesting than the
most engrossing story they had ever read. And the fascination of it was
that, though they now knew so much, they did not yet know all. The
mystery of the locked room always confronted them, always lured them on!

Once, on a day that was unusually mild, they ventured into the old house
for a few moments, and looked long and intently at the Lovely Lady over
the library mantel, and at the two pretty children in the drawing-room.

"Yes, that is the boy," said Cynthia. "You can see, even there, what a
fine young fellow he must have made, with those big brown eyes and that
curly golden hair. Oh, the poor mother!-- How she must have grieved, all
these years! You can see that she has never gotten over it, or she would
have come back here sometime. I wonder if she is alive yet!"

In the library, Joyce picked up the paper that had been discovered
through the help of Goliath, and looked it over curiously.

"Why in the world didn't we _read_ this paper when we found it!" she
exclaimed disgustedly. "Just see here,--the big headlines--'Fort Sumter
Surrenders. War Formally Declared. Troops Rushing To Washington!' Why,
Cynthia, it would surely have given us the clue!"

"I don't think it would have," declared Cynthia, sceptically. "I never
would have connected anything in the paper with what happened here."

"Sherlock Holmes would have," mused Joyce. "Well, anyway, we got at the
story in another fashion. But oh, Cynthia, will we ever know about the
locked-up room?" As Cynthia could cast no further light on this vexed
question, they were forced to drop it.

Then came spring, and the ancient cherry-trees in the enclosure back of
the Boarded-up House blossomed anew. One brilliant Saturday morning
early in May, the girls clambered through the fence with their books and
fancy-work, to spend some of the shining hour under the white canopy of
blossoms. They were reading aloud the "Sign of Four," (they inclined
much toward mystery and detective stories at this time) turn and turn
about, while the one who not have the book sewed or embroidered.
Presently Joyce laid down the volume with a big sigh.

[Illustration: "Oh, I _wish_ I were Sherlock Holmes!"]

"Oh, I _wish_ I were Sherl