y assorted bottles. A man was just setting several other bottles
on the same ledge.

These were the bottles the girls had heard striking together as the man
walked through the woods. And the man himself was Professor Spink.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE OLD DOCTOR'S OFFICE

The two girls, almost at once, began to shrink away through the bushes
again--and this without a word or look having passed between them. Both
Lyddy and 'Phemie were unwilling to meet the professor under these
conditions.

They were back at the strawberry patch before either of them spoke aloud.

"What _do_ you suppose he was about?" whispered 'Phemie.

"How do I know? And those bottles!"

"What do you think was in them?"

"Looked like water--nothing but water," said Lyddy. "It certainly _is_
a puzzle."

"I should say so!"

"And there doesn't seem to be any sense in it," cried Lyddy. "Let's go
home, 'Phemie. We've got enough berries for supper."

As they went along the pasture trail, the younger girl suggested:

"Do you suppose he could be making up another of his fake medicines?
Like those 'Stonehedge Bitters?' Lucas says they ought to be called
'_Stonefence_ Bitters,' for they are just hard cider and bad whiskey--and
that's what the folks hereabout call 'stonefence.'"

"It looked like only water in those bottles," Lyddy said, slowly.

"And he's so afraid old Mr. Colesworth--or Harris--will come up here and
find him at work--or come across his water-bottles," continued 'Phemie.
"Lucky this new boarder--Mr. Chadwick--isn't much for long walks. It would
keep old Spink busier than a hen on a hot griddle, as Lucas says, to watch
all of them."

"Well, I wish I knew what it meant. It puzzles me," remarked Lyddy. "And
I never yet asked Mr. Pritchett about the evening we saw him and a man
whom I now think must have been Professor Spink at the farmhouse."

"Ask him--do," urged 'Phemie, at last curious enough to have Lyddy share
all the mystery that had been troubling her own mind since they first came
to Hillcrest.

"I'll do so the very first time I see him," declared Lyddy.

But something else happened first--and something that brought the mystery
regarding Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to a head for the time being, at
least.

'Phemie lost the key to the green door!

Now, off and on, that missing key had troubled Lyddy. She had seldom
spoken of it, for she had never even known it had been in the door when
the girls came to Hillcres