through the dining-room. There for a moment they stood, surveying anew the curious scene.

"Does it strike you as strange," Joyce demanded suddenly, "that there's no silver here, no knives, forks, spoons, sugar-bowls, or-or anything of that kind? Yet everything else in china or glass is left. What do you make of it?"

"Somebody got in and stole it," ventured Cynthia.

"Nonsense! Nobody 's been here since, except ourselves, that 's perfectly plain. No, the people must have stopped long enough to collect it and put it away, or take it with them. Cynthia, why do you suppose they left in such a hurry?" But Cynthia, the unimaginative, was equally unable to answer this query satisfactorily, so she only replied:

"I don't know, I'm sure!"

A room, however, beyond the dining-room was awaiting their inspection. In a corner of the latter, two funny little steps led up to a door, and on opening it, they found themselves in the kitchen.

This bore signs of as much confusion as the neighboring apartment. Unwashed dishes and cooking utensils lay all about, helter-skelter, some even broken, in the hurry with which they had been handled. But, apart from this further indication of the haste with which a meal had been abandoned unfinished, there was little to hold the interest, and the girls soon turned away. "Now for up-stairs!" cried Joyce. "That 's where I 've been longing to get. We will find something interesting there, I'll warrant." With Goliath scampering ahead, they climbed the white, mahogany-railed staircase. On the upper floor they found a wide hall corresponding with the one below, running from front to back, crossed by a narrower one connecting the wings with the main part of the house. Turning to their left, they went down the narrow one, peering about them eagerly. The doors of several bedrooms stood open.

Into the first they entered. The high, old-fashioned, four-post bed with its ruffled valance and tester was still smoothly made up and undisturbed. The room was in perfect order. Joyce's eye was caught by two candlesticks standing on the mantel.

But

"Here's a find!" she announced. "We'll take these to use for our candles. They 're nicer and handier than our tin one. We will keep that for an emergency."

"But ought we disturb them?" questioned Cynthia.

"Oh, you are too particular! What earthly harm can it do? Here! Take this one and I 'll carry the other. This must have been a guest

room, and no one was occupying it when-it all happened. Let's look in the one across the hall." This one also proved precisely similar, bed untouched and furniture undisturbed. Another, close at hand, had the same appearance. They next ventured down a narrower hall, over what was evidently the kitchen wing. On each side were bedrooms, four in all, with sparse, plain furnishings and cot-beds. Each room presented a tumbled, unkempt appearance.

"I guess these must have been the servants' rooms," remarked Cynthia.

"That's the first right guess you 've made!" retorted Joyce, good-naturedly, as she glanced about. "And they all left in a hurry, too, judging from the way things are strewn about. I wonder-"

"What?" cried Cynthia, impatient at the long pause.

"Oh, nothing much! I just wonder whether they went off of their own accord, or were dismissed. I can't tell. But one thing I can guess pretty plainly-they went right after the dinnerparty and did n't stay over another night. 'Cause why? Most of their beds are made, and they left everything in a muss down-stairs. But come along. This is n't particularly interesting. I want to get to the other end of the hall. Something different 's over there!" They turned and retraced their steps, emerging from the servants' quarters and passing again the rooms they had already examined.

On the other side of the main hall they entered an apartment that was not a bedroom, but appeared to have been used as a sitting-room and for sewing. An old-fashioned sewing-table stood near one window. Two chairs and another table were heaped with material and with garments in various stages of completion. An open work-box held dust-covered spools. But still there was nothing special in the room to challenge interest, and Joyce pulled her companion across the hall toward another partially open door.

They had scarcely been in it long enough to illuminate it with the pale flames of their candles, before they realized that they were very near the heart of the mystery. It was another bedroom, the largest so far, and its aspect was very different from that of the others. The high fourposter was tossed and tumbled, not, however, as though by a night's sleep, but more as though some one had lain upon it just as it was, twisting and turning restlessly. Two trunks stood on the floor, open and partially packed. One seemed to contain household linen, once fine and dainty and white, now yellowed and covered with the dust of years. The other brimmed with clothing, a

woman's, all frills and laces and silks; and a great hoop-skirt, collapsed, lay on the floor alongside. Neither of the girls could, for the moment, guess what it was, this queer arrangement of wires and tape. But Joyce went over and picked it up, when it fell into shape as she held it at arm'slength. Then they knew.

"I have an idea!" cried Joyce. "This hoop-skirt, or crinoline, I think they used to call it, gave it to me. Cynthia, we must be in the room belonging to the lovely lady whose picture hangs in the library."

"How do you queried Cynthia.

know?"

"I don't know, I just suspect it. But perhaps we will find something that proves it later." She held the candle over one of the trunks and peered in. "Dresses, hats, waists," she enumerated. "Oh, how queer and old-fashioned they all seem!" Suddenly, with a little cry of triumph, she leaned over and partially pulled out an elaborate silk dress.

"Look! look! what did I tell you! Here is the very dress of the picture-lady, this queer, changeable silk, these big sleeves, and the velvet sewed on in a funny crisscross pattern! Now will you believe me?"

Truly, Cynthia could no longer doubt. It was the identical dress, beyond question. The portrait must have been painted when the garment was new. They felt that at last they had taken a long step in the right direc

toilet were littered about, and a pair of candlesticks were set close to the mirror. (There were, by the way, no traces of candles about the house. Mice had doubtless carried off every vestige of such, long since.) A great wardrobe stood in

tion by thus identifying this room as belonging to the lovely lady of the portrait down-stairs. Joy grew so excited that she could hardly contain a "hurrah," and Cynthia was not far behind her in enthusiasm. But the room had further details to be examined.

An open fireplace showed traces of letters having been torn up and burned. Little, half-charred scraps with faint writing still lay scattered on the hearth. On the dressing-table, articles of the

one corner, the open doors of which revealed some garments still hanging on the pegs, woolen dresses mostly, reduced now to little more than rags through the ravages of moths and mice and time. Near the bed stood a pair of dainty, highheeled satin slippers, forgotten through the years. Everywhere a hasty departure was indicated, so hasty, as Joyce remarked, "that the lady decided probably not to take her trunks, after all, but left, very likely, with only a hand-bag!"

"And now," cried Joyce, the irrepressible, "we 've seen everything in this room. Let's hurry to look at the last one on this floor. That's right over the library, I think, at the end of the hall. We 've discovered a lot here, but I 've a notion that we 'll find the best of all in there!" As they were leaving the room, Goliath, who had curled himself upon a soft rug before the fireplace, rose, stretched himself, yawned widely, and prepared to follow, wherever they led.

"Does n't he seem at home here!" laughed Cynthia. "I hope he will come every time we do. He makes things seem more natural, somehow." They reached the end of the hall, and Joyce fumbled for the handle, this door, contrary to the usual rule, being shut. Then, for the first time in the course of their adventures in the Boarded-up House, they found themselves before an insurmountable barrier.

The door was locked!

The table itself is made of stout oak planks, is eighteen feet across, and it is painted in twentyfive sections, with a rose, the emblem of England, at the center of the sections. At the head of the table is represented the king, Arthur, on a canopied throne, in his royal robes, and bearing in his hands the orb and scepter, emblems of royalty. In each of the remaining twentyfour sections is painted the name of one of the king's knights of the "Table Round," Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Gareth, Sir Bors de Ganis, and others.

THE ROUND TABLE.

given by the king himself to the town of Camelot, "that is called in English, Winchester."

No one knows exactly how old this table at Winchester Castle is. So long ago as 1522, when the Emperor Charles V visited Winchester with Henry VIII, the table was considered an ancient relic and highly prized. So we are safe in concluding that it is more than four centuries old, and not improbably, nearly twice that.

The Great Hall in which it hangs, originally built by William the Conqueror, was rebuilt in 1222 by King Henry III, the builder of Westminster Abbey, who was born in a chamber of this castle. The table may be of this date or even older. The present painting is of the time of Henry VIII.

It was over a hundred and thirty years ago. The opposite neighbor of the Beethovens, who was standing in front of his comfortable home, saw Ludwig, Carl, and Johann Beethoven turn in at their gate and bravely help their staggering father up the steps. He watched them solemnly. "Herr van Beethoven has been drinking again," he thought. Many times after that he saw the same sight-the three Beethoven boys almost lifting that sagging burden into the house.

But what wonderful music came through the open door of the house across the way! At his best, Herr van Beethoven sang beautifully. Ludwig, when he was only four, had sat in his father's lap at the harpsichord, rapt not in the fascination of flying fingers, but in satisfied love of the music. Then Herr van Beethoven had stopped, and, letting the baby hands take their turn on the cold, white keys, had felt with a thrilling, bounding confidence that no ordinary child touched the instrument. Out of it stole the same melody that he had played. And so, when Ludwig was only four or five, his father began his musical training; when he was nine years old, a big man named Pfeiffer, who lived with the Beethovens, gave him regular lessons. As the oldest son and a possible genius, Ludwig was to have his chance. While the Beethoven boys were playing, Herr Pfeiffer would come to the door and thunder, "Ludwig, komm' ins Haus"; and the child, sometimes crying, would stop his fun and stamp into the house to that dull practising. At times, they say, his teacher had to use something harsher than his big, harsh voice.

But once indoors, Ludwig was not miserable; he handled the keys with love. Sometimes Herr Pfeiffer would pick up a sweet-voiced flute, and,

standing there beside the boy, he too would play. And the people going by would stand still to listen, and perhaps even Carl and Johann would stop their games to listen, too, for they were German boys, and music made them happy.

One day, the neighbors learned that the Beethovens had sold their linen and their silver service; another day, that much of the furniture and tableware had been sold. Frau van Beethoven grew paler and paler, and the father kept on drinking. Sometimes Ludwig would go away to play at public concerts. At that time, no one knew that Herr van Beethoven, in order to gain a large audience, reported the child a year younger than he really was. He was such a little fellow for his age that this was easily believed. When, "aged six," he was advertised to give a series of concerts in Cologne, he was really seven. But he was only ten when he made a concert tour through Holland with his mother, and he was only fourteen when he was appointed assistant to the court organist.

People used to love to have him "describe the character of some well-known person" on the piano. He could do with the piano what a painter does with his brush.

Before Beethoven was out of his teens, his brave, good mother died. "There was once some one to hear me when I said, 'Mutter,'" thought the lonely boy. Soon after, his father, who was less than a cipher, lost his position through drink, and so Ludwig was made head of the family, with the weight of his brothers' education and all his father's debts.

Hoping to have his genius recognized and perhaps to take a few lessons, he went from Bonn to Vienna to play before the great Mozart. But