They finally retired, Laura sleeping with her sister, and Cora had begun to talk of the lieutenant again, instead of the burglar, before Laura fell asleep.

In spite of the short hours for sleep, both girls appeared at the breakfast-table before the meal was over, and were naturally pleased with the staccato of excitement evoked by their news.  Mrs. Madison and Miss Peirce were warm in admiration of their bravery, but in the same breath condemned it as foolhardy.

“I never knew such wonderful girls!” exclaimed the mother, almost tearfully.  “You crazy little lions!  To think of your not even waking Hedrick!  And you didn’t have even a poker and were in your bare feet—­and went down in the cellar——­”

“It was all Cora,” protested Laura.  “I’m a hopeless, disgusting coward.  I never knew what a coward I was before.  Cora carried the lamp and went ahead like a drum-major.  I just trailed along behind her, ready to shriek and run—­or faint!”

“Could you tell anything about him when you fell on him?” inquired Miss Peirce.  “What was his voice like when he shouted?”

“Choked.  It was a horrible, jolted kind of cry.  It hardly sounded human.”

“Could you tell anything about whether he was a large man, or small, or——­”

“Only that he seemed very active.  He seemed to be kicking.  He wriggled——­ugh!”

They evolved a plausible theory of the burglar’s motives and line of reasoning.  “You see,” said Miss Peirce, much stirred, in summing up the adventure, “he either jimmies the window, or finds it open already, and Sarah’s mistaken and she did leave it open!  Then he searched the downstairs first, and didn’t find anything.  Then he came upstairs, and was afraid to come into any of the rooms where we were.  He could tell which rooms had people in them by hearing us breathing through the keyholes.  He finds two rooms empty, and probably he made a thorough search of Miss Cora’s first.  But he isn’t after silver toilet articles and pretty little things like that.  He wants really big booty or none, so he decides that an out-of-the-way, unimportant room like Miss Laura’s is where the family would be most apt to hide valuables, jewellery and silver, and he knows that mattresses have often been selected as hiding-places; so he gets under the bed and goes to work.  Then Miss Cora and Miss Laura come in so quietly—­not wanting to wake anybody—­that he doesn’t hear them, and he gets caught there.  That’s the way it must have been.”

“But why,” Mrs. Madison inquired of this authority, “why do you suppose he lit the lamp?”

“To see by,” answered the ready Miss Peirce.  It was accepted as final.

Further discussion was temporarily interrupted by the discovery that Hedrick had fallen asleep in his chair.

“Don’t bother him, Cora,” said his mother.  “He’s finished eating—­let him sleep a few minutes, if he wants to, before he goes to school.  He’s not at all well.  He played too hard, yesterday afternoon, and hurt his knee, he said.  He came down limping this morning and looking very badly.  He oughtn’t to run and climb about the stable so much after school.  See how utterly exhausted he looks!—­Not even this excitement can keep him awake.”