“Do not be frightened,” he said; “we are not going to do you any harm.” He took out his little ebony staff. “We are constables,” he went on, “and have orders to search this house. We must secure you, but you will be released in the morning. Now, which is your room?” In spite of Mark's assurance, the old woman was almost paralyzed with terror. However, the two constables assisted her up to her room, and there secured her with a rope, taking care that it was not so tightly bound as to hurt her. Then they placed a gag in her mouth, and left her. “Now let us search his room in the first place,” Mark said, when they came downstairs again. “I hardly expect we shall find anything. You may be sure that he will have taken great pains to hide away any booty that he may have here, and that it will need daylight and a closer search than we can give the place now, before we find anything.” The search of the house was indeed fruitless. They cut open the bed, prized up every loose board in the bedroom and the parlor, lifted the hearth stone, tapped the walls, and searched every drawer; then, taking a lantern, went out into the stable. The officers were both accustomed to look for hiding places, and ran their hands along on the top of the walls, examining the stone flooring and manger. “That is a very large corn bin,” Mark said, as he looked round, when they desisted from the search. “You are right, sir. We will empty it.” There were two or three empty sacks on the ground near it, and they emptied the corn into these, so that there should be no litter about. Chester gave an exclamation of disappointment as they reached the bottom. Mark put his hand on the bin and gave it a pull. “It is just as I thought,” he said. “It is fastened down. I saw an ax in the woodshed, Malcolm; just fetch it here.” While the man was away Mark took the lantern and examined the bottom closely. “We shan't want the ax,” he said, as he pointed out to Chester a piece of string that was apparently jammed in the form of a loop between the bottom and side. “Just get in and clear those few handfuls of corn out. I think you will see that it will pull up then.” There was, however, no movement in the bottom when Mark pulled at the loop. “Look closely round outside,” he said, handing Malcolm, who had now returned, the lantern. “I have no doubt that there is a catch somewhere.” In a minute or two the constable found a small ring between two of the cobblestones close to the foot of the wall. He pulled at it, and as he did so Mark felt the resistance to his pull cease suddenly, and the bottom of the bin came up like a trapdoor. “That is a clever hiding place,” he said. “If I had not happened to notice that the bin was fixed we might have had a long search before we found it here.”