A mode of accounting for the disappearance of fuel; an unsolved mystery.
1862. These gentlemen [Mr. Cox and Mr. Biddle] … spoke two whole hours … in showing—to borrow an elegant phrase, the paternity of which belongs, I think, to their side of the House,—that there was “a nigger in the wood-pile.”—Mr. W. D. Kelley of Pa., House of Repr., June 3: Cong. Globe, p. 2527/1.
