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 it, 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: