It was a long time before she heard the sounds of the hunt, in which at last the whole party had come to join, approaching her hiding place. But suddenly a lower door was thrown open, and Murray’s voice sounded far down in a determined challenge: "We’ll have you now, Jane--it’s no use. Shirley ’s kept us away so far--the rascal--but your time ’s up!" She _could not_ be caught! There was a tiny door low down in the side of the closet where she was hiding, and dark though she knew it must be in the unknown region beyond this door, she opened it, slipped through, closed it, and crept along the bare beams beyond. Murray was carrying a little electric searchlight, which he was flashing into every nook and crevice. Its sharp beam had penetrated the hole in the blankets Ross had kept for a breathing space. It had likewise sought out the hems of skirts, the soles of shoes, fingers clutching concealing draperies, and elbows sticking unwarily out from sly nooks. Jane saw its rays outline the edges of the small door beyond which she crouched; then she heard Murray’s triumphant cry, "O-ho, she’s dropped her handkerchief! Now we ’re hot on the trail. She’s gone through this door, the crafty lady!" There was a shout of mingled laughter and expostulation. "She wouldn’t go through that rat-hole! It’s too dark in there for a girl. There ’s no floor, either." But Murray was attempting to open the door. It was a sliding door, not a hinged one, and for a moment it delayed him, for he was not familiar with these regions, so dear to Shirley. During that moment, Jane, with the breathless unreadiness to be discovered which takes hold of the hiding one, even in a game, had desperately retreated over the rafters, in the hope of coming upon some sheltering corner. The next instant, with a smothered cry, she had fallen over the edge of something, _splash_ into three feet of water! Nobody had heard her, and somehow, in the intensity of the game, Jane’s second emotion, after the startling sensation of her sudden immersion, was one of absurd relief at finding herself, after all, safe from discovery. For, as the little door at last flew open, and Murray’s brilliant light leaped into the space under the eaves, it disclosed to Jane that she had dropped into a cistern, the top of which lay level with the floor beams, and at the bottom thereof, where, having scrambled to her feet, she stood stooping, was out of sight of the faces peering in at the small door. "Not here," was Murray’s disappointed observation, after one wave of his light round the small space, "unless she’s in mother’s special rain-water tank, white frock and all. Come on. I thought we had her then, sure. Where can she be? She’s been here--witness that handkerchief. And if there’s a cranny we have n’t explored, I ’ll----"