At last Maisie Lennox, who had a fine discernment for places of concealment in the old days when we two used to play at "Bogle-about-the-Stacks" at the Duchrae, cast an eye up at the roof of the well-house.
"I declare, I think there is a chamber up there," she said, and stood a moment considering.
"Give me an ease up!" she said quietly to my mother. She did everything quietly.
"How can there be such a place and I not know it?" said my mother. "Have I not been about the tower these thirty years?"
But Maisie thought otherwise of the matter, and without more ado she set her little feet in the nicks of the stones, which were rough-set like the inside of a chimney.
Then putting her palm flat above her, she pushed an iron-ringed trap-door open, lifted herself level with it, and so disappeared from our view. We could hear her groping above us, and sometimes little stones and lime pellets fell tinkling into the well. So we remained beneath waiting for her report, and I hoped that it might not be long, for I felt that soon I must lay me down and die, so terrible was the tightness about my head.
"There is a chamber here," she cried at last. "It is low in the rigging and part of the roof is broken towards the trees, but the ivy hides it and the hole cannot be seen from the house."
"The very place! Well done, young lass!" said my mother—much pleased, even though she had not found it herself. For she was a remarkable woman.
Maisie looked over the edge.
"Give me your hand?" she said.