"Of course, Hugh, I told him it would be too much for his aching leg, but he assured me the pain had now all left him; and he wanted to know if there was anything I could suggest that Owen might have to add to his comfort while at home studying his lessons or reading. So I went with him upstairs. Say, it's a real queer house, and must look a whole lot spooky at night time; because they only burn lamps and candles, for there's no electricity connection at all, or any gas either, I suppose. "At the end of a long hall we came to where three steps led down into a room. It was a bully place, I will say that, with plenty of light from a lot of small dinky windows that faced on three sides of the room. Owen had fixed it up in good taste in the bargain. He must have plenty of spending money, because there were lots of traps around, from a pair of expensive snow shoes hanging on the wall to a splendid toboggan tilted up in a corner. "In fact, Hugh, the place was pretty well filled with boy truck. It looked cozy to me, and I ought to know something about a boy's den; haven't I arranged mine seven separate times, until now it's back where I started? Well, of course, to please the old gentleman, I walked around, and peeked at things and told him Owen had as fine a loafing place as any boy in Scranton; which sort of talk seemed to tickle Mr. Dugdale a heap. "Then, Hugh, I got my shock, all right. It seemed to grip my heart just as if an ice-cold hand had been laid on it. You see, in nosing around I chanced to set eyes on something that lay half hidden among some papers on a side table. Hugh, you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw that it was a souvenir tea spoon, an ornate one at that, representing some foreign city, I don't know which, for I was too flustered by my terrible discovery to look close. Now, what do you think of that?" CHAPTER IX JUST BETWEEN CHUMS "Oh! I'm sorry to hear that, Thad!" exclaimed Hugh. "Are you dead certain it was a souvenir spoon you glimpsed? Couldn't you have been mistaken?" The other boy shook his head in the negative. "I sure wish I could say so, Hugh, and that's a fact," he replied; "but I've got pretty good eyes, and I ought to know what such things look like, for hasn't my mother been collecting the same for ten years now. Of course, ours are all of this country, representative of cities and places she and dad have visited. But this one was different. I'm as certain as anything that it must have come from some foreign place, because the style and marking stamped is of no American workmanship."