The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery; Or, The Christmas Adventure at Carver House

shment. "He said, 'Dey's some tings folks don't want

more than half believe Hercules knows what it was. Hercules' explanations always become very fluent when he is not telling the truth. If he really hadn't known anything about it he prob

deceive me. I think it was the involuntary utterance of what was in his though

sper dared not look at? Was it something he saw through this window? What is there to be seen out of th

wn. Nearly half a mile to the east of Carver Hill another hill rose sharply from the town's edge. Upon its top stood another old-fashioned dwelling. This hill, crowned with its red brick mansion, was framed in the arch

that house?"

on the Main Street Hill. I'm not acquai

. "Nothing but an old house on a hill," he reported, and handed

's the house Aunt Aggie and I live in! What did that old house have to do with

in your Uncle Jasper's life?" exclaimed Hinpoha eag

r married,"

astically. "I just know that some deep tragedy darkened the s

ntimental language, and the rest

n, in 'The Lost Heiress,'"

t that there are some very romantic poss

herine. "Uncle Jasper probably never married because

fe?" wailed Hinpoha. "It's lots more fun to think romanti

a lot about old Mr. Carver, living alone here all those years, and I've wondered if there wasn't

"inasmuch as he's dead and it's no use asking Hercules anything; so we might as well stop puzzling over it. I'll hunt up something to fill in those screw

ssible mystery connected with the shutter set them on fi

if Uncle Jasper left any record of the repairs and improvements which he made to the house while

agreed the

. "Sherry," she said briskly, "make up your mind this minute whether you want

o want any of it, if you've made up your mind to s

arry out those two tables and that high desk and the chiffonier-all the oak furniture. I'm not keeping a

Uncle Jasper inhabited it," she remarked w

osition as he did, working all day in a room like this. The very sight of that open field out there make

ter over the window,

ns. She looked carefully through the desk first, through old account books and files of papers and bills, but came upon nothing that touched upon repairs made to the house. There was a long bookcase running th

"across," to have seen actual fighting, to have been cited for bravery, and finally to have been shipwrecked, were experiences for which

ontents. Most of them were works on history, some of them Uncle Jasper's own; great solid looking volumes with fine print and di

ok of fiction, not the ghost of a love story! There are plenty of them downstairs in the library, that belonged to Uncle Jasper's father and mother, who must have had quite a lively taste in r

angs downstairs over the harp in the drawing-room. He's got all her various love affairs in it, and it's anything but dry. I sat up a whole night reading it the time I came across

shutter went u

ore modern than the Fall of Rome, and that's still several seasons behind the affairs of Carver House. Hello, what's this?

drawn in India ink on the yellowed page; figures of two pirates with fiercely bristling mustachios, and brandishing scimitars half as large as themselves. Nyoda quite jumped, their

SPER M. CAR

id. "His youthful idea of a man is a rather bloodthirsty one, according to the portrait, I must say. I suppose 'Jasper the Feend' is suppose

rently been done in India ink, were still black, although the page on which they were writt

rry and the boys must see it. I have to go and get lunch started now, bu

we'll get through faster," and the Winn