Mandy, left to her own devices, wandered down the hall to the boudoir. It was located next to the bedroom which had belonged to Miss Susan Baird. The old colored woman cautiously poked her head inside the door sufficiently for to convince herself that the boudoir was empty, then withdrew. She stood for some seconds before the closed door leading into "Miss Susan's" bedroom, but her superstitious dread kept her from entering it. Had she done so she would have found the object of her search. Nina Potter, her ear close to the key-hole of the door, heard Mandy stump heavily away and drew a long, long breath of relief. Getting up from her knees, she looked about the room. It had been left untouched since the funeral, Mandy not having found courage either to dust or sweep, or, for the matter of that, to enter it upon any occasion whatever, in spite of Kitty's directions to put the bedroom in order. It was a large room with high ceilings and diamond-paned windows. The shades were raised and the afternoon sunshine fell full upon the carved four-post bedstead with its time-worn canopy and broad valance. Going over to the bureau, Nina tried the different drawers; they were all unlocked. Turning once again to convince herself that she really was alone in the room, she waited a second and then went through the bureau with neatness and dispatch. Her search was unproductive of result. Nothing daunted, she examined the old desk with equal thoroughness, and then turned her attention to the mahogany wardrobe which occupied one corner of the room. She found that it contained nothing but clothes which a generation before had been fashionable. They hung on the wooden pegs, rainbow hued, beribboned, and musty. Nina hastily closed the doors and turned her back on the wardrobe. The action brought her face to face with the bedstead. It was the only piece of furniture in the room which she had not examined. With some hesitancy she walked over to it. The sheets had been spread neatly over the mattress, but the bolster and pillows had evidently been tossed in place, for they had assumed grotesque shapes and to her excited imagination it seemed as if some human form lay sprawled across the bed. Raising the sheets, she ran her hands back and forth over the mattress as far as she could reach. No rustle of papers, such as she had hoped to hear, resulted. Looking about, she spied the short wooden steps which Miss Susan Baird had used to mount into bed every night, and dragged them into place. Standing on the top step and resting her weight partly on the bed, Nina managed to feel the whole surface of the mattress.