Ruth chanced to be staring at the doughnut on the window sill, and did not at first answer. That was the window at the right of the chimney where she had seen the ghostly apparition fluttering in the storm. The space about the window remained cleared, as it was before. “Wake up!” commanded Agnes. “Where shall we look now?” Ruth turned with a sigh and went toward the high and ornate black-walnut “secretary” that stood almost in the middle of the huge room. “Goodness to gracious!” ejaculated the younger girl. “We’ve tried that old thing again and again. I’ve almost knocked the backboards off, pounding to see if there were secret places in it. It’s as empty as it is ugly.” “I suppose so,” sighed Ruth. “It’s strange, though, that Uncle Peter did not keep papers in it, for that is what it was intended for. Almost every drawer and cupboard in it locks with a different key.” She had been given a huge bunch of keys by Mr. Howbridge when they first came to the Corner House; and she had used these keys freely in searching the garret furniture. As they went hopelessly down to the third floor, at last, Ruth noticed that one of the small chambers on this floor, none of which the family had used since coming to Milton, had been opened. The door now stood ajar. “I suppose that snoopy Mrs. Treble has been up here,” said Agnes, sharply. “I thought all these doors were locked, Ruth?” “Not all of them had keys. But they were all shut tightly,” and she went to this particular room and peered in. The bed was a walnut four-poster—one of the old-fashioned kind that was “roped”—and the feather-bed lay upon it, covered with an old-fashioned quilt. “Why! it looks just as though somebody had been sleeping here,” gasped Ruth, after a moment. “What?” cried Agnes. “Impossible!” “Doesn’t that look like the imprint of a body on the bed? Not a big person. Somebody as big as Tess, perhaps?” “It wasn’t Tess, I am quite sure,” declared Agnes. “Could it have been Sandy-face?” “Of course not! No cat would make such a big hollow, lying down in a bed. I know! it was that Lillie Treble—‘Double Trouble’! Of course,” concluded Agnes, with assurance. So Ruth came out and closed the door carefully. Had it not been for her sister’s assurance at just this moment, Ruth might have made a surprising discovery, there and then! She had to report to Mr. Howbridge, by note, that a thorough search of the garret had revealed nothing which Uncle Peter Stower could have hidden away. While Lillie was under the doctor’s care, Mrs. Treble was out of the way. Affairs at the old Corner House went on in a more tranquil way. The Creamer girls who had first been ill, were allowed out of doors, and became very friendly with Tess and Dot—over the fence. The quarantine bars were not, as yet, altogether down.