mentioned, the boys proceeded, however, from room to room.

Downstairs they found everything to be quite as has been described heretofore. The bucket on the kitchen table beside which, on a former occasion, the boys had seen a tiny pool of water, was now empty and turned upside down. Other little things, such as the tin dipper being inside a cupboard and every drawer and every door closed, suggested that whoever had occupied the house had indeed gone away.

A door opened upon the stairs that led to the second floor. It was closed but not locked. Up 31 the dusty steps the boys went. They found themselves in a hall off of which opened six small bed-rooms. In each was a bedstead of one kind or another, some of iron, some built of pine lumber. There were mattresses on all the beds but on only one was there other bedding. This was in the room the window of which the boys had more than once seen to be open.

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A couple of blankets and a pillow were thrown loosely over this mattress. The latter was quite out of its proper position as if it had been placed on the bedstead hurriedly. Looking more closely the lads discovered that the other mattresses were awry. Dave suggested that someone had pulled them this way and that to see if anything was hidden in or under them. There was no telling whether he was right.

Between two of the tiny bed-rooms was a bath-room. It contained a tub and washstand only, but was quite nicely finished in painted pine as, indeed, was all the second floor. There were no towels, soap, brushes or any of the 32 usual paraphernalia of a bath-room in sight but on a little shelf beneath the mirror were a shaving-mug and brush.

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"See! this has been used just lately! The soap is still wet on the brush," Phil Way observed, picking up that article. "Mr. Grandall forgot it, I reckon."

"Grandall–your grandmother!" exclaimed Worth quickly. "Look at the initial B, big as life, on the cup!"

"Just the same, it was Grandall who was here and the only questions are, what did he come for and where has he went?" said Paul Jones more positively than grammatically.

"Anyhow the shaving cup or the initial, either one, is no sure sign of anything except that someone was here, and we knew that before," said Way reflectively. "Quite likely the reason the mug was left here was 

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