Miss Lois. "Ourselves? No indeed. We've
got to _be_ conundrums as well as guess them, Ruth Young."

They arrived at their destination, not by the train, but in the little
country stage which came from the south. The witnesses from Timloesville
present at the trial had been persons connected with the hotel. In order
that Anne should not come under their observation, they took lodgings at
a farm-house at some distance from the village, and on the opposite side
of the valley. Anne was not to enter the village; but of the
meadow-paths and woods she would have free range, as the inhabitants of
Timloesville, like most country people, had not a high opinion of
pedestrian exercise. Anne was not to enter the town at all; but Miss
Lois was to examine "its every inch."

The first day passed safely, and the second and third. Anne was now
sufficiently accustomed to her new name not to start when she was
addressed, and sufficiently instructed in her "headaches" not to
repudiate them when inquiries were made; Miss Lois announced, therefore,
that the search could begin. She classified the probabilities under five
heads.

First. The man must be left-handed.

Second. He must say "gold" for "cold."

Third. As Timloesville was a secluded village to which few strangers
came, and as it had been expressly stated at the trial that no strangers
were noticed in its vicinity either before or after the murder, the deed
had evidently been committed, not as the prosecution mole-blindedly
averred, by the one stranger who _was_ there, but by no stranger at
all--by a resident in the village itself or its neighborhood.

Fourth. As the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote was unexpected, the
crime must have been one of impulse: there had not been time for a plan.

Fifth. The motive was robbery: the murder was probably a second thought,
occasioned, perhaps, by Helen's stirring.

Miss Lois did not waste time. Within a few days she was widely known in
Timloesville--"the widow Young, from Washington, staying at Farmer
Blackwell's, with her niece, who is out of health, poor thing, and her
aunt so anxious about her." The widow was very affable, very talkative;
she was considered an almost excitingly agreeable person. But it was
strange that she should not have heard of their event, their own
particular and now celebrated crime. Mrs. Strain, wife of J. Strain,
Esq., felt that this ignorance was lamentable. She therefore proposed to
the widow that she sho