"You really did. It is in excellent preservation, Sir Richard says; he and his companions appear to have spent the whole morning in exploring it."
"How could they find their way?" Dick asked. "It looked so awfully dark!"
"They took lanterns, of course."
"Did they find anything, Uncle Theophilus—treasures, I mean?"
"No, merely a few casks of wine and brandy at the far end of the passage near the house. Don't you want to know where the other entrance is? Well, I can tell you. When the explorers had walked what seemed an interminable distance to them, but what was really about half a mile, I suppose, they found themselves in a large cellar, in a corner of which was a flight of well-worn stone steps, so narrow as to admit of only one person climbing them at a time. Sir Richard went up first and the others followed. They mounted higher and higher till they came to a heavy oaken door which was wide open, and passing through the doorway, they found themselves in a small, long-ways room furnished with a wooden bedstead, a table, and a single chair. There was a door in the wall of the little room—I don't mean the one leading to the stone steps, but another directly opposite—which, when opened after some difficulty, for it was locked, and had to be forced, revealed what proved to be a huge sheet of canvas framed in wood—apparently the back of a picture." The doctor paused, and glanced from one to the other of his listeners with a smile. They were regarding him with almost breathless interest.
"Well?" said Miss Warren eagerly.
"Well?" echoed Dick.
"After careful examination Sir Richard discovered a mark like a cross in the wood at the bottom of the canvas; he pressed it with his finger, and so must have touched a hidden spring, for immediately the great sheet of canvas silently slid to one side, leaving an aperture in the wall through which Sir Richard stepped, and found himself in the picture-gallery of his own house!"
"Theophilus!" cried Miss Warren incredulously, whilst Dick was struck silent with astonishment.
"Yes; the secret passage leads from the sea-shore to the Manor House," Dr. Warren said impressively, "where the entrance is hidden by the picture of Paul Gidley, the martyr. I saw the little room behind the picture myself this afternoon, and Sir Richard wants you to see it too, Mary Ann. Don't you think you might call at the Manor House to-morrow?"