“Oh, what a beautiful mixture of personal pronouns!” laughed Alice, and the laugh seemed to relieve the strain on the nerves of all of them. “Well, Nat, what are your plans?”
“We must find that secret room.”
“Yes; but how?”
“Listen, girls. It must be near the chimney. Probably some stovepipe hole leads into this flue, and the draught carried the sound downward. All we have to do is to make another search upstairs near where the chimney passes through.”
“Simple as a problem in geometry,” murmured Alice, who detested the study. “Lead on, Nat!”
“Will you come?” asked breath-of-the-pine-tree, looking at her companions.
“Well, I suppose it might be some one in trouble,” agreed Mrs. Bonnell. “But— Oh, well, I guess there are enough of us,” and she picked up from the floor a stout cudgel. “We had better arm ourselves,” she added. “There may be——”
“Rats!” broke in Marie.
“She is fined a pound of candy for saying that!” exclaimed Natalie. “Come on,” and she led the way.
Now that they had some definite plan of searching they felt more assured of success. There were two upper stories to the old mill, but the girls had given only a casual glance around the third one, as it was so dark and gloomy that they did not fancy remaining in it. Now it became practically certain that, if there was a secret room, it would be on the third floor, for a look around the place where the big chimney passed through the second floor, showed that there was no room for a hidden recess.