boasted in vain of her bravery; in truth, she was not afraid of
any man.

They found the fastenings of the doors secure and likewise those
of all the windows, until they came to the kitchen. There, the
cook had left a window up, which plausibly explained the
marauder's mode of ingress. Then, at Cora's insistence, and to
Laura's shivering horror, they searched both cellar and garret,
and concluded that he had escaped by the same means. Except
Laura's bed, nothing in the house had been disturbed; but this
eccentricity on the part of a burglar, though it indeed struck the
two girls as peculiar, was not so pointedly mysterious to them as
it might have been had they possessed a somewhat greater
familiarity with the habits of criminals whose crimes are
professional.

They finally retired, Laura sleeping with her sister, and Cora had
begun to talk of the lieutenant again, instead of the burglar,
before Laura fell asleep.

In spite of the short hours for sleep, both girls appeared at the
breakfast-table before the meal was over, and were naturally
pleased with the staccato of excitement evoked by their news. Mrs.
Madison and Miss Peirce were warm in admiration of their bravery,
but in the same breath condemned it as foolhardy.

"I never knew such wonderful girls!" exclaimed the mother, almost
tearfully. "You crazy little lions! To think of your not even
waking Hedrick! And you didn't have even a poker and were in your
bare feet--and went down in the _cellar_----"

"It was all Cora," protested Laura. "I'm a hopeless, disgusting
coward. I never knew what a coward I was before. Cora carried the
lamp and went ahead like a drum-major. I just trailed along behind
her, ready to shriek and run--or faint!"

"Could you tell anything about him when you fell on him?" inquired
Miss Peirce. "What was his voice like when he shouted?"

"Choked. It was a horrible, jolted kind of cry. It hardly sounded
human."

"Could you tell anything about whether he was a large man, or
small, or----"

"Only that he seemed very active. He seemed to be kicking. He
_wriggled_----ugh!"

They evolved a plausible theory of the burglar's motives and line
of reasoning. "You see," said Miss Peirce, much stirred, in
summing up the adventure, "he either jimmies the window, or finds
it open already, and Sarah's mistaken and she _did_ leave it open!
Then he searched the downstairs first, and didn't find anything.
Then he came upstairs, and was afraid to co