us
all!! He's made the best find yet!"

"Is it the key?" cried Cynthia.

"No, it's this!" And before Cynthia's astonished eyes Joyce dangled a
large gold locket, suspended on a narrow black velvet ribbon. In the
candle-light the locket glistened with tiny jewels.

"Do you recognize it?" demanded Joyce.

"_Recognize_ it? How should I?"

"Why, Cynthia! It's the very one that hangs about the neck of our Lovely
Lady in the picture down-stairs!" It was, indeed, no other. Even the
narrow black velvet ribbon was identical.

"She must have dropped it accidentally, perhaps when she took it off,
and it rolled under the bed. In her hurry she probably forgot it," said
Joyce, laying it beside the curious disk they had raked from the
fireplace. "Isn't it a beauty? It must be very valuable." Cynthia bent
down and examined both articles closely.

"Did you notice, Joyce," she presently remarked, "that those two things
are exactly the same shape, and almost the same size?"

"Why, so they are!" exclaimed Joyce. "Oh, I have an idea, Cynthia! Can
we open the locket? Let's try." She picked it up and pried at the catch
with her thumb-nail. After a trifling resistance it yielded. The locket
fell open and revealed itself--empty. Joyce took up the disk and fitted
it into one side. With the gold back pressed inward, it slid into place,
leaving no shadow of doubt that it had originally formed part of this
trinket.

"Now," announced Joyce, "I know! It was a miniature, an ivory one, but
the fire has entirely destroyed the likeness. Question: how came it in
the fire?" The two girls stood looking at each other and at the locket,
more bewildered than ever by this curious discovery. Goliath, cheated of
his plaything, was making futile dabs at the dangling velvet ribbon.
Suddenly Joyce straightened up and looked Cynthia squarely in the eyes.

"I've thought it out," she said quietly. "It just came to me. The
miniature was taken out of the locket--on purpose, _to destroy_ it! The
miniature was of the same person whose picture is turned to the wall
down-stairs!"

CHAPTER VI

JOYCE'S THEORY

"Cynthia, what's your theory about the mystery of the Boarded-up House?"

The two girls were sitting in a favorite nook of theirs under an old,
bent apple-tree in the yard back of the Boarded-up House, on a sunny
morning a week later. They were supposed to be "cramming" for the
monthly "exams," and had their books spread out all around them. Cy