"Probably that was because there was nothing worth his taking. If he came here in search of plunder, he must have gone away a disgusted man." "If he came here in search of plunder?--what else could he have come for?" "Ah! that's the question." "What's this?" Stooping, Ella picked up something off the floor. "Here's something he's left behind, at any rate." She was holding a scrap of paper. "What is it--a _pièce de conviction_ of the first importance: the button off the coat by means of which the infallible detective hunts down the callous criminal?" "I don't know what it is. It's a sort of hieroglyphic--if it isn't--nonsense." Madge went and looked over her shoulder. Ella was holding half a sheet of dirty white notepaper, on which was written, with very bad ink and a very bad pen, in a very bad hand:-- "TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST." "Right--Straight across--three--four--up. "Right--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--left eye--push." The two girls read to the end--then over again. Then they looked at each other--Madge with smiling eyes. "That's very instructive, isn't it?" "Very. There seems to be a good deal of cat and dog about it." "There does, I wonder what it means." "If it means anything." Madge, taking the paper from Ella's hand, went with it closer to the candle. She eyed it very shrewdly, turning it over and over, and making as if she were endeavouring to read between the lines. "Do you know, Ella, that there is something curious about this." "I suppose there is, since it's gibberish; and gibberish is curious." "No, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of the heading--'Tom Ossington's Ghost.' Do you know that that enterprising stranger, who came in search of music lessons he didn't want, asked me if my name was Ossington, and if no one of that name lived here." "Are you sure Ossington was the name he mentioned? It's an unusual one." "Certain; it was because it was an unusual one that I particularly noticed it. Then that dreadful woman was full of her ghosts, even claiming, as you heard, to be the ghost's wife. Doesn't it strike you, under the circumstances, as odd that the paper the burglar has left behind him, should be headed 'Tom Ossington's Ghost'?" "It does seem queer--though I don't know what you are driving at." "No; I don't know what I am driving at either. But I do know that I am driving at something. I'm beginning to think that I shall see a glimmer of light somewhere soon--though at present I haven't the faintest notion where." "Do you think it was either of your visitors who has paid us another call to-night?" "No; but I tell you what I do think." "What?" "I shouldn't be surprised if we've been favoured with a call from the individual who wasn't one of my visitors; the man in the road, who took to his heels in such a hurry at the sight of the woman." "What cause have you to suppose that?"