For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned, this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg's mangled corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile. To every one's infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan's departure was plainly premeditated--"with malice prepense," to quote Judge Fitch--since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar. The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at the end of a single week. Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from her night's sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else had filled her mind ever since her friend's going. With a shawl over her head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of kitchen floor space. "Oh, Susan! Such a fri--" These were her four and a half words of greeting.