antry of my spring-house and Mr. Pierce was probably asleep. I clutched
my aching head and tried to think. I was roused by hearing somebody say
that Miss Jennings had no glass, and by steps nearing the pantry. I had
just time to slip the bolt.

"Pantry's locked!" said a voice.

"Drat that Minnie!" somebody else said. "The girl's a nuisance."

"Hush!" Miss Summers said. "She's probably in there now--taking down
what we say and what we eat. Convicting us out of our own mouths."

I held my breath and the knob rattled. Then they found a glass for Miss
Patty and forgot the pantry.

Under cover of the next burst of noises I tried the pantry window, but
it was frozen shut. Nothing but a hammer would have loosened it. I began
to dig at it with a wire hairpin, but I hadn't much hope.

The fun in the spring-house was getting fast and furious. Miss Summers
was leaning against the pantry door and I judged that most of the men
in the room were around her, as usual. I put my ear to the panel of
the door, and I could pretty nearly see what was going on. They were
toasting Mr. Thoburn, and getting hungrier every minute as the supper
was put out on the card-tables.

"To the bottle!" somebody said. "In infancy, the milk bottle; in our
prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle."

Mr. von Inwald came over and stood beside Miss Summers, and I could hear
every whisper.

"I have good news for you," she said in an undertone.

"Oh! And what?"

"Sh! You may recall," she said, "the series of notes, letters, epistles,
with which you have been honoring me lately?"

"How could I forget? They were written in my heart's blood!"

"Indeed!" Her voice lifted its eyebrows, so to speak. "Well, somebody
got in my room last night and stole I dare say a pint of your heart's
blood. They're gone."

He was pretty well upset, as he might be, and she stood by and listened
to the things he said, which, if they were as bad in English as they
sounded in German, I wouldn't like to write down.

And when he cooled down and condensed, as you may say, into English,
he said Miss Jennings must have seen the letters, for she would hardly
speak to him. And Miss Summers said she hoped Miss Jennings had--she was
too nice a girl to treat shamefully.

And after he had left her there alone, I heard a sort of scratching
on the door behind Miss Summers' back, and then something being shoved
under the door. I stooped down and picked it up. It was a key