: The Girl Next Door by Seaman Augusta Huiell Relyea C M Charles M Illustrator - Friendship Juvenile fiction; Girls Juvenile fiction; Mystery fiction

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ssor Hardwick," said Marcia, "and I've practised quite hard lately. It's about all I had to do. He says I've made some progress already."

So Marcia obligingly went to the parlor and brought back her violin. When she had tuned it and tucked it lovingly under her chin, she sat down in the window-seat and ran her bow over the strings in a shower of liquid melody. For one so young she played astonishingly well. Janet listened, breathless, absorbed.

"Look!" she breathed. Marcia followed the direction of her gaze, and turned to stare out of the window at the house opposite. And this is what she saw:

The shutter of a window on the top floor had been pushed partly open, and a face looked out,--a face with big, appealing eyes, and a frame of golden, curling hair falling all about it. Straight over at the two in the window it gazed, eager, absorbed, delighted. And then suddenly, as it detected their own interested stare, it withdrew, and the shutter was softly closed.

The two girls drew a long breath and gazed at each other.

THE GATE OPENS

For the two ensuing days, Marcia and Janet, tense with excitement, discussed the most recently discovered inmate of "Benedict's Folly," and watched incessantly for another glimpse of the face behind the shutter. How was it, they constantly demanded of each other, that a girl of fourteen or fifteen had come to be shut up in the dreary old place? Was she a prisoner there? Was she a relative, friend, or servant? Was she free to come and go?

"Do you suppose she has always lived there?" queried Marcia, for the twentieth time. And as Janet could answer it no better than herself, she propounded another question:

Of course she knew, but it didn't help them in the least to solve this latest phase of their mystery. Finally Marcia, who still clung a bit shyly to the fairy lore of her earlier years, declared:

The two girls put on their hats and strolled out for their usual afternoon walk and treat of ice-cream soda. But they had gone no farther from their own door than the length of the Benedict brick wall when they were suddenly brought to a halt in front of the closed gate by hearing a sound on the other side of it. It was a sound indicative of some one's struggling attempt to open it--the click of a key turning and turning in the lock and the futile rattling of the iron knob. And then the sound of a voice murmuring:

"No," Janet whispered back. "Let's just stroll on a little way, and then turn back. We can see what happens then without seeming to be watching."

They walked on quickly for a number of yards, and then turned to approach the gate again. Even as they did so they saw it open, and out stepped a little figure.

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