If you did that long enough, the things around you changed, kind of melted into a dream: the ranch house became a castle; Shorty and Missou’ and the others were retainers; old Sam Kee, in the kitchen, was a Swart Paynim—he made a very good Swart Paynim, indeed. With one of Aunt Val’s cast-off dresses on, a veil arranged for the headdress of a castle lady, the dream thrived splendidly. At these times she instinctively dodged Uncle Hank and the boys as much as she could. It broke in dreadfully to have one of them sing out: “Hello, Hilda—playin’ lady?” It even hurt to have Uncle Hank look at her with absent fondness and call her “Pettie,” when it seemed he might almost have seen that she was the despairing lady of “the house of the Rhodes,” with bloody Edom o’ Gordon besieging her walls. But one day, in the spring of the year she was thirteen, rummaging in the cellar, trying to pry open a heavy box of books, she made a wonderful find. Back of these boxes, concealed by them and forgotten, because they had stood untouched there for years, she discovered an opening in the earth wall—an unmistakable door. It was low, not very wide, unframed except by the earth-and-stone walls of the cellar side, made of rough, heavy planks marked with hieroglyphics of dust and draped mournfully with cobwebs; it had iron hinges like those on the stable door, and was closed only with a loop of leather and a big nail. Silent, unknown, unsuspected—a very gateway of mystery—all alone down there under the ground, this crude, sinister, little door stung Hilda’s imagination like a strange, threatening word out of another tongue, whispered in the dark. Trembling, she pushed upon it. It gave inward creakingly. Utter blackness was beyond it. She flew up the cellar stairs to Sam Kee with a breathless demand for a candle. After some argument, the candle was secured and lighted. She hurried to the cellar and, with a heart that beat to suffocation, cautiously shoved open the door—her door—her discovery.