"Why, it's a fireplace!" cried the Imp, poking her head in as Louis pulled away another board. "A great, immense fireplace, even bigger than the one in your living-room."
It was nothing less. Each girl took a turn at poking her head into the open space, and all were amazed at the breadth of the great chimney-place, which still contained the andirons and curious old hooks and cranes of bygone years.
"I must tell the others!" cried Louis. "I'm sure they'll be interested in this." And he rushed away to inform them.
While he was gone, the Imp suddenly emerged from the closet in great excitement.
"I have an idea," she whispered to the others. "I may be crazy, but I believe we're on the track of the hiding-place of those papers. Don't you remember what Monsieur said about a chimney?"
The two girls looked startled. Before they could discuss the matter, however, back came Louis with Monsieur and the Meadows couple behind him.
"It's perfectly clear to me," Louis was explaining to them, "that at some time or other, pretty far back, some one had the great 'long kitchen' in this house made into two rooms, and the original walls and fireplace were entirely boarded-up and concealed. I always thought it rather strange that this house, which is exactly the same build and design as the old Caswell place, for instance, or a dozen others around here, should be entirely without that immense 'long kitchen,' as they call it, that all the rest have. You know it's the original kitchen of the former New Englanders. They used it as kitchen and dining-room and everything. The fireplace is the biggest in the house, for often they would have an ox drag into the room a great log that would entirely fill the chimney-place. Somebody has evidently had that room made into two smaller ones, with no fireplace at all. Queer thing to do. I wonder why they did it?"
In his interest in this explanation, Louis had not appeared to notice the evident excitement of Monsieur and old John Meadows and Miss Yvonne. Now he was thunderstruck when Monsieur asked him if it was possible to pull down the boarding around the fireplace.
"Why, of course," exclaimed Louis, much astonished. "I have some tools I could use, and it wouldn't take much strength, but what's the use of demolishing it now? It will make an awful mess, and there probably isn't much beyond what we've already seen, anyhow. It would be a good thing, perhaps, to have this fine old room restored while we're away, but I don't see any use in beginning it now."
The marquis, trembling so that he was forced to support himself by leaning on a packing-case, spoke with more decision than his hearers had ever heard before: