Despite the fact that Sue and Carol boiled with impatience for over a week, conjecturing what it could possibly be that made Louis afraid of the picture in Monsieur's room, they found out nothing new on the subject, for the simple reason that there was never a moment when they again saw him alone. To ask him about it when others were in the room was impossible. Two days after Sue's last visit he was allowed to sit up, and a day or two after that he was permitted to walk about for a few steps. Then the nurse took her leave, and Louis insisted on returning to his own room on the ground floor. "And only to think," sighed Sue, when she heard of it, "now we'll probably never see those strange pictures on Monsieur's wall again. I could cry with vexation when I think of it. Carol, do you feel as if there were something terribly mysterious about them,--not only the two covered ones, but the boy's, also? I wonder if it haunts you the same as it does me?" "It certainly does," admitted Carol, "and yesterday I wrote a little poem about it. Here it is. What do you think of it?" She handed Sue a scrap of paper on which the verses were written. The two girls had dropped off the trolley on their way home from high school, and were bound for the library. Sue took the paper and studied it carefully as she walked. "I like it a lot," she acknowledged, as she handed it back. "Especially those last two lines: 'O boy of nut-brown hair and smiling eyes, Speak out and tell the secret that you know.' Really, it's awfully pretty and the best thing you've done yet. Why don't you show it to Miss Cullingford. It hasn't any direct reference to Louis's affairs in it, and I'll warrant she'd recommend it to be published in our high school paper, _The Argus_." "Well, perhaps I will," agreed Carol, visibly pleased with Sue's unstinted praise. She folded the paper back into a book as they went up the steps of the library. It was while the two were wandering round the big, sunny room, scanning the shelves for an interesting book, that they made a startling discovery. "Will you look at that!" whispered Carol, suddenly pinching Sue as they were passing the door of the smaller reference room, a spot they themselves seldom entered. There, near a shelf of immense volumes, stood--who but the Imp! She was deeply engrossed in the pages of a tome nearly as large as herself. The sight was the more amazing because the Imp was neither a member of the library, so far as they knew, nor did she ever enter it, if she could help it, except rarely to get a book for the girls. The two stood rooted to the spot with astonishment. Suddenly the Imp caught sight of them. She promptly closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf. All she would admit in reply to what she felt to be their intrusive inquiries was the statement: