gether all
the time she was in the house?"

"No; that is, the girl said no one went up to the observatory with Miss
Dare; that Miss Darling did not happen to be at home that day, and Miss
Dare had to study alone. Hearing this," pursued Hickory, answering the
look of impatience in the other's face, "I had a curiosity to interview
the observatory, and being--well, not a clumsy fellow at softsoaping a
girl--I at last succeeded in prevailing upon her to take me up. Byrd,
will you believe me when I tell you that we did it without going into
the house?"

"What?"

"I mean," corrected the other, "without entering the main part of the
building. The professor's house has a tower, you know, at the upper
angle toward the woods, and it is in the top of that tower he keeps his
telescopes and all that kind of thing. The tower has a special staircase
of its own. It is a spiral one, and opens on a door below that connects
directly with the garden. We went up these stairs."

"You dared to?"

"Yes; the girl assured me every one was out of the house but the
servants, and I believed her. We went up the stairs, entered the
observatory----"

"It is not kept locked, then?"

"It was not locked to-day--saw the room, which is a curious one--glanced
out over the view, which is well worth seeing, and then----"

"Well, what?"

"I believe I stood still and asked the girl a question or two more. I
inquired," he went on, deprecating the other's impatience by a wave of
his nervous hand, "when Miss Dare came down from this place on the
morning you remember. She answered that she couldn't quite tell; that
she wouldn't have remembered any thing about it at all, only that Miss
Tremaine came to the house that morning, and wanting to see Miss Dare,
ordered her to go up to the observatory and tell that lady to come down,
and that she went, but to her surprise did not find Miss Dare there,
though she was sure she had not gone home, or, at least, hadn't taken
any of the cars that start from the front of the house, for she had
looked at them every one as they went by the basement window where she
was at work."

"The girl said this?"

"Yes, standing in the door of this small room, and looking me straight
in the eye."

"And did you ask her nothing more? Say nothing about the time, Hickory,
or--or inquire where she supposed Miss Dare to have gone?"

"Yes, I asked her all this. I am not without curiosity any more than you
are, Mr. Byrd."

"And sh