The three filed into the den off the haymow, and Carol solemnly padlocked the door on the inside. As there were only two chairs, the Imp perched herself on the old desk, curling her feet up under her. The one window was wide open, and through it was wafted the scent of lilacs and the sound of a lawn-mower propelled by Dave somewhere across the Green. For a moment after they were seated no one spoke.

"Well?" said Carol, impatiently. "Go on, Imp! Begin somewhere."

"I was just wondering where to begin," admitted the Imp. "I was trying to remember what you actually do know, but I guess, except for the fact as to who that picture is, you don't know a single thing."

"You once said," Sue reminded her, "that there were three things we actually knew that we hadn't connected with this affair. We've tried and tried to think what they were, but somehow we never could seem to strike them. Perhaps you'd better begin with them."

But the Imp ignored this suggestion.

"I suppose it has dawned on you that that picture has some connection with Louis?" she asked.

"We've thought of it, but it seemed so impossible that we finally gave up the idea," replied Sue. "What could it possibly have to do with him?"

"Everything," answered the Imp briefly.

"Go on, then!" commanded Sue. "You've kept us on tenter-hooks long enough. If you're going to tell us at all, do please begin at the beginning, and don't stop till you're through."

"The trouble is just this," admitted the Imp. "I don't actually know anything much at all. It's just guesswork, except for one or two things. You seem to think Monsieur has told me the whole business. Well, he hasn't,—not a single thing,—except that I was right about knowing who that portrait was, and he asked me not to say anything about it, especially to Louis. Everything else I've worked out for myself, and it may be all wrong; but somehow I don't think it is."

The two listeners looked crestfallen. For some time past they had come to believe that the Imp was wholly and entirely in Monsieur's confidence. It was a shock to learn the truth. Carol immediately intimated as much to the assembled company.

"You're a pack of sillies," exclaimed the Imp scornfully, "to imagine such a thing, anyway! Why, this thing is of—of immense importance to—well, I was almost going to say to the whole world. Do you suppose for one moment that a youngster would be let into such an important secret?"

"What are you saying? 'To the whole world'?" cried Carol. "Are you going crazy, or do you think you are taking us in again with some of your nonsense?"

"I'm not talking nonsense, and I'll prove it. Do you know what I discovered by reading a little more than you did at the library, and also from an old book that Miss Hastings lent me, because I told her I was interested in the subject? Well, I found out that, although most people think it's a settled fact that that poor little dauphin died in prison, still there are a lot of legends that he really escaped, that he was helped to escape by some of the Royalists, and that the little boy who died there wasn't the dauphin at all!"

The Imp stopped to let this startling news sink into the minds of her hearers.

"But—but—" stammered Sue, "if he escaped, what became of him?"

"That's something that never was known," answered the Imp. "After the downfall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons in France, there were a lot of pretenders who said they were the escaped dauphin and claimed the throne. But they never could prove it, so no one paid much attention to them. Only you see there must have been some truth in it,—his escape, I mean,—or no one would have thought of such a thing."

"But I don't see, anyway, what all that has to do with this affair," remarked Carol.

"Don't you?" replied the Imp coldly. "Then you're more stupid than I gave you credit for being."

Carol quite wilted under this rebuke, but Sue, who had been doing some rapid thinking, cried:

"Mercy! It can't be possible that—"

"Wait a minute," interrupted the Imp. "I'm going to answer your question about those three things, and see what you make of it. Do you remember what they used to call Louis XVI—the people, I mean? I'm sure you know, because you mentioned it to me that day you were telling me what you'd found out."

"'Louis the Locksmith,'" answered Carol promptly.

"Right," said the Imp. "Does that make you think of anything?"

Carol shook her head.

"Oh, you're hopeless!" groaned the Imp. "Try the next one. When Louis was sick one time Monsieur stood over him murmuring something about 'the Temple look.' Does that convey anything to your mind?"

"It does to mine," interrupted Sue. "Oh, I believe I'm beginning to understand."

But Carol still looked hopelessly confused.

"Well, here's the last," went on the Imp. "Why should Monsieur and all the others treat Louis in the queer way they do? Why should Louis have found Monsieur kissing his hand that time?"

"Oh, please explain clearly, Bobs!" moaned Carol. "You mix me up so, firing questions at me, that I can't think at all. Just say straight out what it is."

"All right, I will. I'll say it in words of one syllable, suitable to your infant mind," laughed the Imp. "It may sound like the craziest idea that ever was imagined, but I believe Louis to be a descendant of that little dauphin, and I believe Monsieur knows it and the Meadows people, too."

The conjecture was so stupefying in its scope that the three girls sat for a moment in dumb, confused wonder.

"I can't believe it," murmured Carol, at length. "Right here on little Paradise Green, way out of the world, to have such a thing happen? Impossible!"

"It's no stranger than lots of other things that have happened in history," asserted the Imp, "when you come to think it over. And it's so possible, too."

"But here, here!" cried Sue. "What in the world would Louis be doing in America? I could believe it more easily if we lived somewhere in France."

"I read in one book," replied the Imp to this objection, "that there was a rumor that after the dauphin escaped he was taken to America. There was an American Indian, named Eleazar Williams, or something like that, who claimed to be the dauphin. So you see it's not so impossible, after all."

"Now I begin to see," remarked Carol, after a long pause, "what you meant by some of those three things. If Monsieur thinks Louis is a descendant of the dauphin, I can understand why they all treat him with such respect. Why, girls," she cried enthusiastically, "just think,—Louis—our Louis—may have royal blood in his veins! I simply can't believe it!"

"That remark about 'the Temple look' meant, I suppose," murmured Sue, "that Louis looked so awfully when he was sick that it reminded Monsieur how the dauphin must have appeared after his bad treatment and illness in the Temple Tower. That never occurred to me. But I can't yet see any connection with what you said about 'Louis the Locksmith.'"

"That's easy," answered the Imp. "It was one of the first things I thought of. Don't you remember how Louis XVI was always tinkering with things and fixing locks, and how fond he was of mechanical work? The whole court used to resent it. Well, the Meadows and Monsieur evidently think that Louis has inherited that trait, and it drives them wild. Don't you remember what Louis told us Miss Yvonne once said when she found him fixing the lock on the kitchen-door? 'The ancient blood! It will ruin everything!' Doesn't that indicate what they think?"

"True enough," Sue had to admit. "But what foolishness all this is, girls, when you think of Louis's history and the history of his family! I was asking Father about Louis's folks not long ago, just out of curiosity. He said that the Durants had lived in and owned that house across the Green for many, many years, even longer than our descendants have lived in our house. It was way back in the eighties when Louis's father left here and went out West. He was a young man then, about Father's age. In fact, they'd gone to school together. But this Charles Durant went away out West to better himself, and rented the old house on this Green. Father says he never saw him again, because Charles Durant and the wife he'd married out there were suddenly killed in an accident. The first Father heard about it was when old Mr. Meadows and his daughter, whom nobody had ever seen before, came to this place with the tiny baby who was Louis, and settled here for good. They never said much about themselves, except that they were old friends of the Durant family and that they had always lived in France. They explained that they had come over here to take care of and bring up the last Durant baby, since its parents had been killed. Now will you tell me how anything about a dauphin could come in there?"

"Maybe they didn't bring the baby from out West," suggested Carol, "but brought him over from France with them. Maybe he isn't a Durant at all."

"That's possible, too," said the Imp, "but, after all, it doesn't make any difference where he came from, does it, if Louis is what we think he is?"

"But who is this 'Monsieur,' and what has he to do with the whole thing?" suddenly cried Carol.

"That," admitted the Imp, "is what I can't figure out. I'm sure he must be some relative. They say there are descendants of the Bourbons still living. It wouldn't be strange if he wanted to hunt up a long-lost relative, but why he should make such a secret of it is beyond me."

"Bobs," cried Sue, suddenly going off at a tangent, "have you any idea about those two other pictures in Monsieur's room,—the ones all covered up? I've stayed awake nights trying to guess who on earth they could be, and why he keeps them covered."

"Why, of course I don't know," laughed the Imp, "but I can make a good guess. I believe they're portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I can't imagine why he keeps them covered, unless it's to keep Louis or any one else from guessing anything about this affair. Of course they're very well-known portraits, and almost any child would know who they were at first sight. But it's different with the dauphin. Very few people know that picture by sight. That's the only reason I can think of."

It seemed such a simple explanation, after they'd heard it, that both girls felt a little chagrined to think that they'd never had the wit to work out this easy problem. But so humble were they now, after the Imp's astounding revelation, that they were willing to admit their inferior wit twenty times over.

It was Sue who presently voiced the unspoken thought that was in each mind.

"I wonder how Louis will take all this?" she sighed.

This was a matter that went beyond their conjecture. How, indeed, would Louis take it?