f mystery. Now
there was no mystery at all.

In a few words, Joe Wegg had explained everything, and explained all so
simply and naturally that Louise felt like sobbing with the bitterness
of a child deprived of its pet plaything. The band of self-constituted
girl detectives had been "put out of business," as Patsy said, because
the plain fact had developed that there was nothing to detect, and never
had been. There had been no murder, no robbery, no flight or hiding on
the part of the Weggs to escape an injured enemy; nothing even
mysterious, in the light of the story they had just heard. It was
dreadfully humiliating and thoroughly disheartening, after all their
earnest endeavor to investigate a crime that had never been committed.

Uncle John rallied his nieces on their somber faces at the dinner table,
and was greatly amused when the Major, despite the appealing looks
directed at him, gave Mr. Merrick a brief resume of the afternoon's
developments.

"Well, I declare!" said the little man, merrily; "didn't I warn you,
Louise, not to try to saddle a murder onto my new farm? How you foolish
girls could ever have imagined such a carnival of crime in connection
with the Weggs is certainly remarkable."

"I don't know about that, sir," returned the Major, seriously. "I was
meself inoculated with the idea, and for a while I considered meself and
the girls the equals of all the Pinkertons in the country. And when ye
come to think of it, the history of poor Captain Wegg and his wife, and
of Nora and Thomas as well, is out of the ordinary entirely, and,
without the explanation, contained all the elements of a
first-class mystery."

"How did you say the Weggs lost their money?" inquired Uncle John,
turning the subject because he saw that it embarrassed his nieces.

"Why, forest fires at Almaquo, in Canada, burned down the timber they
had bought," replied the Major. "And, by the way, John, you're
interested in that matter yourself, for the Pierce-Lane Lumber Company,
in which you own a lot of stock, had contracted to cut the timber on
a royalty."

"How long ago?"

"Three years, sir."

"Well, we've been cutting timber at Almaquo ever since," said Mr.
Merrick.

Louise dropped her fork with a clatter, disclosing, in this well-bred
young lady, an unusual degree of excitement.

"Then there _is_ something to detect!" she cried.

"Eh? What do you mean?" inquired her uncle.

"If you've been cutting timber at Almaquo for