ng that I recognize a face I've been seeing now for three
consecutive nights?"

"This _is_ unbelievable," Frank Wiley III gasped.

Said the doctor gravely: "I ask you to be so very certain, nurse,
because the original of that picture has been dead for over fifteen
years."

As those astonishing words fell on Miss Beaver's ears, she turned from
the doctor in sheer resentment.

"I don't care for practical jokes," said she with dignity to the boy's
apparently stupefied father, "and I must say I resent being made sport
of. I tell you plainly that old Mr. Wiley, the man in this picture," and
she tapped her finger impressively on the album page, "has spent a
couple of hours with Frankie and me every night since I've been on duty
here, and that's _that_!"

"Then that's settled," exclaimed the boy's father in a loud and
determined voice. "The dog stays."

As if miraculously restored, Mrs. Frank sprang to her feet.

"Is that _so_? Well, my dear husband, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
The dog goes!" She gave her husband glare for glare, the rouge standing
in two round spots on her white face.

His look was one of active dislike. "We'll see about that, Florry. All
of you, come out into the hall. I want you to see something. Then let
anyone say Frank can't keep that dog!"

He beckoned imperatively and they followed down the great staircase into
the great hall below, where he stopped under a gilt-framed oil portrait,
life size. His finger pointed significantly.

* * * * *

Miss Beaver deciphered the small label at the front of the massive
frame. The painting was a portrait of Frank Wiley I, the founder of the
Wiley family. Her eyes rose higher to really look at the picture for the
first time since she had been in the house. It was the living likeness
of old Mr. Wiley and it almost seemed to her that, as she stared, one of
his eyelids quivered slightly as if in recognition of her belated
admiration for his diplomatic procedure. Beside him on the painted table
one of his fine hands lay negligently or rather, seemed to be lying
higher than the table proper, resting on ... was it just bare canvas?

"Look for yourself, Florry! Where is the fox-terrier that was painted
sitting on the table under Grandfather's hand?"

Young Mrs. Wiley stared pallidly at the likeness of the founder of the
Wiley clan. "White paint," she conjectured. Then, peering closer at the
canvas: "Somebody's scraped off t