resently she spoke:

"Joyce, _do_ you think there would be any harm in my doing something
I've longed to do ever since we first entered this house?"

"What in the world is that?" queried Joyce.

"Why, I want to _dust_ this place, and clear out of the way some of the
dirt and cobwebs! They worry me terribly. And, besides, I'd like to see
what this lovely furniture looks like without such quantities of dust
all over it."

"Good scheme, Cyn!" cried Joyce, instantly delighted with the new idea.
"I'll tell you what! We'll come in here this afternoon with old clothes
on, and have a regular _house-cleaning_! It can't hurt anything, I'm
sure, for we won't disturb things at all. I'll bring a dust-cloth, too,
and an old broom. But let's go and finish our studying now, and get that
out of the way. Hurrah for house-cleaning, this afternoon!"

Filled with fresh enthusiasm, the two girls rushed out to hurry through
the necessary studies before the anticipated picnic of the afternoon. If
their respective mothers had requested them to perform so arduous a task
as this at home, they would, without doubt, have been instantly plunged
into deep despair. But because they were to execute the work in an old
deserted mansion saturated with mystery, no pleasure they could think of
was to be compared with it. This thought, however, did not enter the
heads of the enthusiastic pair.

* * * * *

Smuggling the house-cleaning paraphernalia into the cellar window,
unobserved, that afternoon, proved no easy task, for Cynthia had added a
whisk-broom and dust-pan to the outfit. Joyce came to the fray with an
old broom and a dust-cloth, which latter she thought she had carefully
concealed under her sweater. But a long end soon worked out and trailed
behind her unnoticed, till Goliath, basking on the veranda steps, spied
it. The lure proved too much for him, and he came sporting after it, as
friskily as a young kitten, much to Cynthia's delight when she caught
sight of him.

"Oh, let him come along!" she urged. "I do love to see him about that
old house. He makes it sort of cozier. And, besides, he seems to belong
to it, anyway. You know he discovered it first!" And so Goliath followed
into the Boarded-up House.

They began on the drawing-room. Before they had been at work very long,
they found that they had "let themselves in" for a bigger task than they
had dreamed. Added to that, performing it by dim candle-light