“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Sophy. “You know I dreamed Dave Carney went through the room.” So she had! Perhaps—perhaps, after all, it had not been a dream! Victoria felt a sudden and unaccountable weakness, and she was forced to sit down for a moment. Surely it could not have been Dave Carney who had thus entered the house of his benefactors! “Sophy,” said Victoria, “don’t say anything about that dream, will you? Promise me that you won’t tell any one that you dreamed that about Dave.” “Why, no, Vic; I won’t, if you don’t want me to; but why not? Why can’t I tell?” “I have good reasons, Sophy dear, but I haven’t time to explain them now; but you know it is fun to have a secret with me, isn’t it?” “Oh, very well,” said Sophy, greatly pleased with the idea. “Yes, I do love secrets with you, Vic. I’ll never tell.” Downstairs all was in confusion. The dining-room had apparently been entered first, for the most thorough work had been done here. Drawers stood open, closets and sideboard were in confusion. The china had been left untouched, but the silver candlesticks and the old snuffers with their tray were gone, and some small articles in silver and plated ware which had not been carried upstairs at night with the table silver and the service. A clock, which had stood upon the dining-room mantel-shelf, had been carried into the parlor and left there. No doubt the man or men had been frightened off by the noise which Honor made when she set down her pitcher and afterwards opened her window, for her room was over the parlor. They had gone out by way of the front door, for it was found unbolted. No other door or window had been disturbed, and it was reasonable to suppose that one man had entered by way of Victoria’s room and had then opened the front door to the others, if others there were. It was astonishing that the man—who no doubt was the one in the shrubbery whom Katherine had heard—should have chosen the exact time during which Victoria was absent from the room to climb up over the dining-room window, and that he had not seen Victoria, when she was sitting in her room, as she said she had been doing for more than an hour. It could only be explained by the fact that she had sat in a low chair a little back from the window, and completely in the shadow. He had probably been watching from the shrubbery, and, not seeing any one and finding the window conveniently open, had determined to enter in that way, whatever his previous plans may have been; and he had chosen exactly the right moment for doing it.