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paper and illustrated.”
    “I know nothing of it,” said the earl.
    “The third account is for wall paper; twenty-seven rolls of an expensive wall paper, and twenty-seven rolls of a cheap paper, the latter being just half the price of the former. This wall paper seems to have been supplied by a tradesman in the station road in the village of Chizelrigg.”
    “There’s your wall paper,” cried the youth, waving his hand; “he was going to paper the whole house, Higgins told me, but got tired after he had finished the library, which took him nearly a year to accomplish, for he worked at it very intermittently, mixing the paste in the boudoir, a pailful at a time, as he needed it. It was a scandalous thing to do, for underneath the paper is the most exquisite oak paneling, very plain, but very rich in color.”
    I rose and examined the paper on the wall. It was dark brown, and answered the description of the expensive paper on the bill.
    “What became of the cheap paper?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think,” said I, “we are on the track of the mystery. I believe that paper covers a sliding panel or concealed door.”
    “It is very likely,” replied the earl. “I intended to have the paper off, but I had no money to pay a workman, and I am not so industrious as was my uncle. What is your remaining account?”
    “The last also pertains to paper, but comes from a firm in Budge Row, London, E.C. He has had, it seems, a thousand sheets of it, and it appears to have been frightfully expensive. This bill is also illegible, but I take it a thousand sheets were supplied, although, of course, it may have been a thousand quires, which would be a little more reasonable for the price charged, or a thousand reams, which would be exceedingly cheap.”
    “I don’t know anything about that. Let’s turn on Higgins.”
    Higgins knew nothing of this last order of paper either. The wallpaper mystery he at once cleared up. Apparently the old earl had discovered by experiment that the heavy, expensive wall paper would not stick to the glossy paneling, so he had purchased a cheaper paper, and had pasted that on first. Higgins said he had gone all over the paneling with a yellowish-white paper, and after that was dry he pasted over it the more expensive rolls.
    “But,” I objected, “the two papers were bought and delivered at the same time; therefore he could not have found by experiment that the heavy paper would not stick.”
    “I don’t think there is much in that,” commented the earl; “the heavy paper may have been bought first, and found to be unsuitable, and then the coarse, cheap paper bought afterwards. The bill merely shows that the account was sent in on that date. Indeed, as the village of Chizelrigg is but a few miles away, it would have been quite possible for my uncle to have bought the heavy paper in the morning, tried it, and in the afternoon sent for the commoner lot; but, in any case, the bill would not have been presented until months after the order, and the two purchases were thus lumped together.”
    I was forced to confess that this seemed reasonable.
    Now, about the book ordered from Denny’s. Did Higgins remember anything regarding it? It came four years ago.
    Ah, yes, Higgins did; he remembered it very well indeed. He had come in one morning with the earl’s tea, and the old man was sitting up in bed reading this volume with such interest that he was unaware of Higgins’s knock, and Higgins himself, being a little hard of hearing, took for granted the command to enter. The earl hastily thrust the book under the pillow, alongside the revolvers, and rated Higgins in a most cruel way for entering the room before getting permission to do so. He had never seen the earl so angry before, and he laid it all to this book. It was after the book had come that the forge had been erected and the anvil bought. Higgins never saw the book again, but one morning, six months before the earl died,