t, for if she
really was on the eve of a great discovery she wanted to be alone at
first.

As she entered the room, the lines came to her mind:

"Above the stair, across the hall,
Between the bedhead and the wall,"

and she noticed that the chimney-piece stood on a sort of wide platform,
which extended across that whole end of the hall. Could it be that Mr.
Marmaduke had meant above this platform, calling it a stair, which ran
across the great hall? For years they had taken the direction to mean "up
the staircase," and "across the corridor," or hall which led to the
bedrooms.

Slowly, almost as if afraid, Patty crossed the hall, stepped up on the
platform, and examined the old chimney-piece. She couldn't tell,
positively, but surely, surely it looked as if it _might_ once have been
the headboard of an ancient bed. It certainly was different in its
workmanship from the wood carving that decorated the apartment.

The top of it was well above her head, but might it not be that the old
rhyme meant between _this_ bedhead and the wall?

Here they had never looked. It must be that it was not generally known
that this mantel was, or had been, a bedhead.

Still, as if in a daze, Patty went and sat in a chair facing the old
chimney-piece, and wondered. She intended to call the others in a moment,
but first she wanted to enjoy alone the marvel of her own discovery.

As she sat there, scrutinising every detail of the room, the lines kept
repeating themselves in her brain:

_"Above the stair, across the hall, Between the bedhead and the wall."_

If the secret pocket was between that bedhead and the wall, it was
certainly above the stair across the hall! Why had that stair or platform
been built across the hall? It was a peculiar arrangement.

This question Patty gave up, but she thought it might well have been done
when the bedhead was set up there, in order to make the chimney-piece
higher and so more effective.

Patty had learned something of architecture in her library browsings.

Above the high mantel was a large painting. It was a landscape and showed
a beautiful bit of scenery without buildings or people. In the foreground
were several distinct trees of noble proportions.

"They're firs," said Patty to herself, for she had become thoroughly
familiar with fir trees.

And then, like a flash, through her brain came the words:

_"Great treasure lieth in the poke Between the