“I don’t know exactly. I just don’t believe it. I should have difficulty believing such a thing about any living man whom I had respected, and I’ll believe it still less about a man who is dead. Moreover, we owe it to ourselves to follow it to its remotest conclusion, Herbert. The possession of ancestors who are a credit is no small possession. But it’s like good health, we don’t value it till it’s gone.” “Do you think we could make investigations and prove it untrue?” “It might be possible.” Elizabeth was pleased. Herbert did not often make original suggestions. “I’ll do all the work on the place,” offered Herbert, looking uneasily over his shoulder. “That is, if you have to go away anywhere. We haven’t papers or records of any kind, have we?” “Nothing.” “And you’re _sure_ mother never said anything?” Elizabeth’s brow puckered. “I can’t remember that she did. I have been trying to think. It must have been too dreadful to talk about and I wonder her heart didn’t break.” Elizabeth looked back into the dark hall as though she could see there a lonely figure. “Have you any plan, Elizabeth?” “No; except that I thought of hunting through the house. Years and years have passed, but there might be something. There might be a nook or cranny that had escaped the renters and that has escaped us.” “What do you think you might find?” “I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “Now let us go to bed.” The next day offered itself as a suitable time for indoor occupation. The fine weather had broken and rain fell steadily. The plain was gray, the woods were dim, there was all about the sound of running water, water dripping from the eaves and falling from the sky and running rapidly in the brook near the house. “We’ll begin in the cellar,” said Elizabeth. The cellar, explored inch by inch by the aid of lantern and candle, yielded nothing but resolutions that it should be thoroughly whitewashed as soon as possible. “We can store bushels and barrels of stuff there,” said Elizabeth as they came upstairs. “Now the first floor.” Beside the fireplace in the parlor were two deep cupboards for wood. These had been looked into often, but Elizabeth examined them again and scrutinized them earnestly to be sure that they contained no secret compartments. But the interior was plastered smoothly. On the first floor there were no other cupboards or closets, and the other rooms, occupied as a kitchen and as bedrooms, had been lived in for too many weeks to hold any secrets. At the top of the first flight of stairs, Elizabeth stood still. “Herbert, this place has inexhaustible possibilities! See these many rooms, how easily we could make this a comfortable place for quiet people in summer! Water could be piped down from one of the springs. I know that gravity alone would carry it higher than the house-top. I wonder whether John Baring thought of that!”