“Take a look round, sir; perhaps you’ll make it out.”
Roy did look round—an easy thing to do in a round chamber—but the door, the one large cupboard, the locker in the window, and a broad oaken panel over the mantelpiece were examined and in vain. The last took his attention the most, looking as if it might be a low door-way, and sounding hollow; but he could make nothing of it, and he fell to examining the wainscot in other parts and the floor boards.
“Better give it up, sir,” said the sergeant, smiling. “I don’t suppose any one would find it out unless it was by accident. Shall I show you now?”
“No,” said Roy, who was on his mettle; and he examined the whole place again, beginning with the locker in the window, opening an oaken box-like contrivance in which lay a few of the soldiers’ cloaks for which there was no room on the nails and hooks lately driven into the wall.
But after a quarter of an hour’s keen search, Roy gave it up.
“I am wasting time,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant; “but, as children say at play, you were burning more than once.”
Roy felt disposed to renew his quest, but he refrained, and the sergeant went to the casement window, and as Roy watched him, opened it till it stood at a certain angle, which allowed him to thrust down a pin and secure it—a simple enough thing to do, and apparently to keep the wind from blowing it to and fro.
“That unlocks the trap-door, sir,” said the man. “If you open it more or less, it doesn’t act. Look here.”
He opened the lid of the locker, and turned a catch over it to keep it from shutting down again, then threw out the cloaks.