The room was chill and bleak, every footfall awaking a responsive echo and leaving a mark on the grey dust that had accumulated on the floor for many years. The wall opposite the door was adorned with delicately-painted panels, representing the nine muses, each female figure being twice life-size and rising from the floor to the arched roof, between each of the eight windows. At one end of the room the panels represented the three Graces, at the other the three Fates, while the remaining wall displayed nine goddesses of heathen mythology. The arched roof was painted a deep blue, silvered with stars, but nowhere appeared any male form--nothing but the gracious female figures of Hellas were to be seen around. The squire went straight to the extreme corner of the room, on the left hand of the door, and knelt down where there was a panel representing Clotho spinning the thread of life. He evidently touched a spring concealed in the gold-embossed frame of the panel, for it silently slid back, displaying a wall of rough stone. The upper blocks of stone appeared heavy and cumbersome, but the lower ones were much smaller, and as Beaumont looked he saw Garsworth drag from its place a smallish stone in the lower centre of the wall, displaying only the rough place where it lay, but no cavity where anything could be hid. The squire, however, soon showed how ingenious was the hiding-place he had chosen, for on turning round the stone which he had taken out, there appeared a small hole hollowed out and from this the old man took a paper and a ring. He laid them down for a moment to lift the stone off his lap, but at this moment Beaumont, exerting his hypnotic power, said abruptly: "You are looking at the paper." Under the influence of the hallucination produced, the squire looked earnestly at the stone on his lap, while Beaumont, picking up the real paper, glanced over it rapidly, examined the ring, then laid them both down again by the somnambulist. "You should put them back," he suggested distinctly. Garsworth picked up the paper, and replacing it in the stone, put it once more in its former position, and then dragged the panel along till it clicked on the spring, thus resuming its former appearance. No one, to look at it, would think that such a large picture could be moved in any way, and even if the secret of the panel were discovered, Beaumont felt sure no one would think of examining the interior of the stone in the wall. Having now ascertained all he wanted to know, Beaumont's next care was to get the squire back to his former position and wake him, so that he would be unconscious of what he had done during his hypnotic sleep. To this end he bent forward to the kneeling figure on the floor. "Mr. Beaumont is waiting to finish your picture."