These arrangements were carefully kept from the servants, who were only

commencing to sleep at night, and who retired, one and all, with barred

doors and lamps that burned full until morning.

The house was quiet again Wednesday night. It was almost a week since

Louise had encountered some one on the stairs, and it was four days

since the discovery of the hole in the trunk-room wall.

Arnold Armstrong and his father rested side by side in the Casanova

churchyard, and at the Zion African Church, on the hill, a new mound

marked the last resting-place of poor Thomas.

Louise was with her mother in town, and, beyond a polite note of thanks

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to me, we had heard nothing from her. Doctor Walker had taken up his

practice again, and we saw him now and then flying past along the road,

always at top speed. The murder of Arnold Armstrong was still

unavenged, and I remained firm in the position I had taken--to stay at

Sunnyside until the thing was at least partly cleared.

And yet, for all its quiet, it was on Wednesday night that perhaps the

boldest attempt was made to enter the house. On Thursday afternoon the

laundress sent word she would like to speak to me, and I saw her in my

private sitting-room, a small room beyond the dressing-room.

Mary Anne was embarrassed. She had rolled down her sleeves and tied a

white apron around her waist, and she stood making folds in it with

fingers that were red and shiny from her soap-suds.

"Well, Mary," I said encouragingly, "what's the matter? Don't dare to

tell me the soap is out."

"No, ma'm, Miss Innes." She had a nervous habit of looking first at my

one eye and then at the other, her own optics shifting ceaselessly,

right eye, left eye, right eye, until I found myself doing the same

thing. "No, ma'm. I was askin' did you want the ladder left up the

clothes chute?"

"The what?" I screeched, and was sorry the next minute. Seeing her

suspicions were verified, Mary Anne had gone white, and stood with her

eyes shifting more wildly than ever.

"There's a ladder up the clothes chute, Miss Innes," she said. "It's up

that tight I can't move it, and I didn't like to ask for help until I

spoke to you."

It was useless to dissemble; Mary Anne knew now as well as I did that

the ladder had no business to be there. I did the best I could,

however. I put her on the defensive at once.

"Then you didn't lock the laundry last night?"

"I locked it tight, and put the key in the kitchen on its nail."

"Very well, then you forgot a window."

Mary Anne hesitated.




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