divide the estate up into
sections. Then let's examine each section in turn."

This sounded well, but it was weary work. In the wooded land, especially,
it was hopeless to look for any indicatory mark beneath the undergrowth
of forty years. But each morning the four young people started out with
renewed determination to keep at it, at any rate.

On rainy days they searched about the house. Having found one secret
panel, they hoped for more, and the boys went about tapping the walls or
carved woodwork here and there, listening for a hollow sound.

Bob and Patty went on searching the books. But though a number of old
papers were found they were of no value. Incidentally, Patty was
acquiring a store of information of various sorts. Though too eager in
her work to sit down and read any book through, she scanned many pages
here and there, and learned much that was interesting and useful.
Especially did she like books that described the old castles and abbeys
of England. There were many of these books, both architectural and
historical, and Patty lingered over the illustrations, and let her eyes
run hastily over the pages of description.

One afternoon she sat cross-legged, in Turk fashion, on the library
floor, absorbed in an account of the beautiful old mansion known as
"Audley End." The description so interested her that she read on and on,
and in her perusal she came to this sentence:

"There are other curious relics, among them the chair of Alexander Pope,
and the carved oak head of Cromwell's bed, converted into a chimney-piece."

Anything in reference to the headboard of a bedstead caught Patty's
attention, and she read the paragraph over again.

"Sinclair," she called, but he had gone elsewhere, and did not hear her.

Patty looked around at the mantel or chimney-piece in the library, but it
was so evidently a part of the plan of wall decoration, that it could not
possibly have been anything else.

Patty sighed. "It would have been so lovely," she thought to herself, "if
it only had been a bedhead, made into a mantel, for then that bothering
old man could easily have tucked his money between it and the wall."

And then, though Patty's thoughts came slowly, they came surely, and she
remembered that in the great hall, or living-room, the mantel was a
massive affair of carved oak.

Half bewildered, Patty dropped the book, jumped up, and went to the door
of the hall. No one was there, and the girl was glad of i