Miss Octavia had been over the floors of the two rooms twice, and was about to desist. Her less frequent appeals to the rest of us for confirmation of some suspected change in the responses to her thumping indicated disappointment. She made her last stand in the corner of the smaller room, and as we all stood holding our lights, we were conscious that the dull monotonous thump suddenly changed its tone. We all noticed it at the same instant, and exchanged glances of surprise. "Do you hear that, gentlemen?" She subdued her gratification in the rebuking glance she gave us. Calm and unhurried, she rested a moment on her stick, with the candle's soft glow about her, a smile ineffably sweet on her face. "The timbers may have rotted away underneath. We did n't raise these floors," said Pepperton; but we both dropped to our knees and brought all the candle-light to bear upon the flooring. Dust and mortar, shaken loose in the destruction of the house, filled the cracks. Pepperton, deeply absorbed, continued to sound the corner with his knuckles. "It really looks as though these boards had been cut for some purpose," he said, whipping out his knife. I ran to the kindling-room and found a hatchet, and when I returned he had dug the dirt out of the edges of the floor-planks. Silence held us all as I set to prying up the boards. "I beg of you to exercise the greatest care, gentlemen. If bones are interred here we must do them no sacrilege," warned Miss Octavia. By this time we all, I think, began to believe that the flooring might really have been cut in this corner of the old room to permit the hiding of something. The room had grown hot, and Cecilia opened the cellar-windows outside to admit air. The old planks clung stubbornly their joists, but after I had loosened one, the others came up quickly and the smell of dry earth filled the room. Pepperton had, at Miss Octavia's direction, brought a chisel and crowbar from the tool-room in the cellar, and he stood ready with these when I tore up the last board, disclosing an oblong space about five feet long and slightly over three feet wide. It was possible that this was the whole story, but Pepperton began driving the bar vigorously into the close-packed soil. As he loosened the earth I scooped it out, and we soon had penetrated about six inches beneath the surface. We were all excited now. The edge of the bar struck repeatedly against something that resisted sharply. It might have been a root, but when Pepperton shifted the point of attack the same booming sound answered to the prodding. Pepperton now thought it might be only an empty cask or a box of no interest whatever; but Miss Octavia, hovering close with a candle, encouraged us to go on, and was fertile in suggestions as to the most expeditious manner of resurrecting whatever might be buried there. We were pretty well satisfied from the soundings that the hidden object was somewhat shorter and narrower than the hole itself.