"I knew it would," Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop couldn't remember ever to have seen her beam before. "I knew it would frighten you all half to death, but when a thing's to be done, it's to be done, and there ain't no use shirking. I had to go, and I had to go quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present, as that I went. Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any fool might have guessed if they took the trouble. In the first place, I don't mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn't possibly be Mr. Kimball's. Now, what _do_ you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he didn't never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he didn't know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose name did, except Mr. Kimball. There's only one way to ferret out the perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that's by deduction, and the first rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought much of Lawyer Weskin, I'm free to admit that, but if he don't know nothing else, it's as clear as shooting that he does know about education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be praised for it." "You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment. "I don't say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it. I certainly don't. In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on. So that put it past Mr. Kimball. And the only other K I could possibly think of was old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K, too. There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn't qualify neither, for they're too rich to need to do any burglarizing. Well, I can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn't know where to turn, and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn't of been for a letter I got the day of the night I went away. You'd never guess in the world, Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell." Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in astonishment, but no sound came forth.