tell you? There was a copy of that very same picture, right before my eyes!"

"Well, for goodness sake, tell me who it was, or I'll die of curiosity!" cried Sue impatiently.

"That's just what I don't know," Carol answered. "But I have the book here. It belongs to Miss Cullingford, and she offered to lend it to me. Of course, when I saw it, I acted surprised, but not half as much so as I felt, because I didn't want to have to tell her anything about Louis. I only said that it seemed to be the same picture, and she said it must have been some copy that I'd seen, for the portrait was a famous one, painted by a famous artist. Then she went on to criticize my poem, and made one or two suggestions about some little changes in it. She said that if I made them, she thought the poem stood a fair chance of winning the prize. Then she offered to lend me the book to take home and read, because she thought I might be interested in it. She little knew how desperately interested I was! But come! Let's look at it for ourselves, and see if we can find out anything we'd like to know."

Carol took the book out of a desk where she had locked it, and opened it at a certain page. And there, staring right up at them, was the selfsame picture that hung in Monsieur's room,--the "boy of nut-brown hair and smiling eyes." Only of course the picture was in black and white, not colored as in the oil-painting. But it was the same; you couldn't mistake it. And underneath the portrait it said, "The Dauphin of France."

"Carol," said Sue, after she'd read it, "will you tell me what on earth a 'dauphin' is?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," answered the other. "I never heard the word before, and I haven't had a chance to look it up anywhere. It looks something like the word 'dolphin.' Perhaps it's the French for it. And yet I don't think that is likely. A dolphin is some kind of a sea-creature, like a porpoise, isn't it? So it couldn't have any such meaning here."

"But what is this book?" asked Sue.

They looked at the title, and it was, "Memoirs of Madame Lebrun." Carol said that Miss Cullingford had told her that it was an account of the life of a famous French artist and of the pictures she had painted. As that didn't give them any special help, they turned the pages eagerly, but couldn't seem to find out a thing about this particular picture that interested them.

"Wait a minute," said Carol. "I'll run into 

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