ait, while I ran through the lawn.

"How do they know it was lost?" I said. "Perhaps it was stolen before
Mr. Carroll went to Netherby."

"They think not," said Cecil. "Who would have stolen it?"

"Ned Brooke. I saw him hanging around. And you never saw such a look
as came over his face when he heard Mr. Carroll say there was five
hundred dollars in that pocketbook."

"Well, I did suggest to them that Ned might know something about it,
for I remembered having seen him go down the lane while I was waiting
for you, but they won't hear of such a thing. The Brookes are kind of
proteges of theirs, you know, and they won't believe anything bad of
them. If Ned did take it, however, there's not a shadow of evidence
against him."

"No, I suppose not," I answered thoughtfully, "but the more I think it
over, the more I'm convinced that he took it. You know, we all went to
the back field to look at the Jerseys, and all that time the coat was
hanging there in the hall, and not a soul in the house. And it was
just after we came back that I saw Ned scuttling down the lane so
fast."

I mentioned my suspicions to the Carrolls a few days afterwards, when
I went down with the photographs, and found that they had discovered
no trace of the lost pocketbook. But they seemed positively angry when
I hinted that Ned Brooke might know more about its whereabouts than
anyone else. They declared that they would as soon think of suspecting
one of themselves as Ned, and altogether they seemed so offended at my
suggestion that I held my peace and didn't irritate them by any more
suppositions.

Afterwards, in the excitement of our cousins' visit, the matter passed
out of my mind completely. They stayed two weeks, and I was so busy
the whole time that I never got a chance to develop that third plate
and, in fact, I had forgotten all about it.

One morning soon after they went away, I remembered the plate and
decided to go and develop it. Cecil went with me, and we shut
ourselves up in our den, lit our ruby lantern and began operations. I
did not expect much of the plate, because it had been exposed and
handled carelessly, and I thought that it might prove to be
underexposed or light-struck. So I left Cecil to develop it while I
prepared the fixing bath. Cecil was whistling away when suddenly he
gave a tremendous "whew" of astonishment and sprang to his feet.

"Amy, Amy, look here!" he cried.

I rushed to his side and looked at the plate as