Help: folders in Mail disappeared!

I regularly check two POP mailboxes in Mail in 10.4.3.
While on vacation, I moved the Users/Library/Mail folder and my Mail prefs (Users/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.prefs or whatever it is) to my laptop and then proceeded to work from my laptop while I was traveling. Worked fine.
Came home, did the opposite (dragged those two files from the laptop to the desktop), started up Mail, and everything looks normal -- I have my two POP boxes at the top, then a couple dozen folders below that. But as soon as I click "Get New Mail" all the couple dozen folders disappear!
If I quit and reboot Mail, the same thing happens.
If I reboot Mail, but click on any of these folders, I can go through them and read messages, etc, but as soon as I click Get New Mail (or it does that automatically, on a 5-minute timer), all my folders disappear!! (Leaving only the POP boxes, Drafts, Sent, Trash, and Junk)
HELP!
Both computers running 10.4.3.

I did correctly copy both the Mail folder and the prefs file.
I later solved the issue. For some inexplicable reason, two of my mail folder's permissions got screwed up in the transfer. I found this after I went into my Mail folder, looked at the long list of folders, and saw the red sign next to two of them. After I reset them both to read and write (and their contents), Mail is now back to functioning normally.
I have no clue what set this off (the permissions were fine on the source computer's Mail folder and all its contents), but that solved it.
Argh. I hate permissions.

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