THE MYSTERY AT THE OLD FORGE

The disappearance of a handful of old coins fifty years before is a poor excuse for the appearance of this threadbare narrative. When the coins vanished, Donny Martin was wrongly implicated, and he died shortly thereafter. His name has never been cleared to the satisfaction of Miss Nettie, his now elderly sister, who tells the story to Timothy (a boy of indeterminate age and character) over a plate of cookies one snowy afternoon. Some days later, Timothy is the handy receptacle into which an old, half-crazed man pours his confession. That's all there is, there isn't any more.