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sound, as of something being pushed about the floor. After they had listened a moment, it suddenly struck them both that the noise was somehow very familiar.
    â€œWhy, it’s Goliath, of course!” laughed Cynthia, “This is the second time he has scared us. He has something under there that he’s playing with, knocking it about, you know. Let’s see what it is!” They tiptoed over and raised the valance.
    Cynthia was right. Goliath was under the bed, dabbing gracefully with one paw at something attached to a string or narrow ribbon. Despite the rolls of dust that lay about, Joyce crawled under and rescued it. She emerged with a flushed face and a triumphant chuckle. “Goliath beats us all!! He’s made the best find yet!”
    â€œIs it the key?” cried Cynthia.
    â€œNo, it’s this!” And before Cynthia’s astonished eyes Joyce dangled a large gold locket, suspended on a narrow black velvet ribbon. In the candle-light the locket glistened with tiny jewels.
    â€œDo you recognize it?” demanded Joyce.
    â€œRecognize it? How should I ?”
    â€œWhy, Cynthia! It’s the very one that hangs about the neck of our Lovely Lady in the picture down-stairs!” It was, indeed, no other. Even the narrow black velvet ribbon was identical.
    â€œShe must have dropped it accidentally, perhaps when she took it off, and it rolled under the bed. In her hurry she probably forgot it,” said Joyce, laying it beside the curious disk they had raked from the fireplace. “Isn’t it a beauty? It must be very valuable.” Cynthia bent down and examined both articles closely.
    â€œDid you notice, Joyce,” she presently remarked, “that those two things are exactly the same shape, and almost the same size?”
    â€œWhy, so they are!” exclaimed Joyce. “Oh, I have an idea, Cynthia! Can we open the locket? Let’s try.” She picked it up and pried at the catch with her thumb-nail. After a trifling resistance it yielded. The locket fell open and revealed itself—empty. Joyce took up the disk and fitted it into one side. With the gold back pressed inward, it slid into place, leaving no shadow of doubt that it had originally formed part of this trinket.
    â€œNow,” announced Joyce, “I know! It was a miniature, an ivory one, but the fire has entirely destroyed the likeness. Question: how came it in the fire?” The two girls stood looking at each other and at the locket, more bewildered than ever by this curious discovery. Goliath, cheated of his plaything, was making futile dabs at the dangling velvet ribbon. Suddenly Joyce straightened up and looked Cynthia squarely in the eyes.
    â€œI’ve thought it out,” she said quietly. “It just came to me. The miniature was taken out of the locket—on purpose, to destroy it! The miniature was of the same person whose picture is turned to the wall down-stairs!”

CHAPTER VI
JOYCE’S THEORY
    C YNTHIA, what’s your theory about the mystery of the Boarded-up House?”
    The two girls were sitting in a favorite nook of theirs under an old, bent apple-tree in the yard back of the Boarded-up House, on a sunny morning a week later. They were supposed to be “cramming” for the monthly “exams,” and had their books spread out all around them. Cynthia looked up with a frown, from an irregular Latin conjugation.
    â€œWhat’s a theory?”
    â€œWhy, you know! In Conan Doyle’s mystery stories Sherlock Holmes always has a ‘theory’ about what has happened, before he really knows; that is, he makes up a story of his own, from the few things he has found out, before he gets at the whole truth.”
    â€œWell,” replied Cynthia, laying aside her Latin grammar, “since you ask me, my theory is that some one committed a murder in that room we can’t get in, then locked it up and went away, and had the house all boarded