rousing more fear than supplied the proper relish of danger. The
house itself even those few never dared to enter.

Not so had it been with Helen and Leopold. The latter had
imagination enough to receive everything offered, but Helen was the
leader, and she had next to none. In her childhood she had heard the
tales alluded to from her nurses, but she had been to school since,
and had learned not to believe them; and certainly she was not one
to be frightened at what she did not believe. So when Leopold came
in the holidays, the place was one of their favoured haunts, and
they knew every cubic yard in the house.

"Here," said Helen to her cousin, as she opened the door in a little
closet, and showed a dusky room which had no window but a small one
high up in the wall of a back staircase, "here is one room into
which I never could get Poldie without the greatest trouble. I gave
it up at last, he always trembled so till he got out again. I will
show you such a curious place at the other end of it."

She led the way to a closet similar to that by which they had
entered, and directed Bascombe how to raise a trap which filled all
the floor of it so that it did not show. Under the trap was a sort
of well, big enough to hold three upon emergency.

"If only they could contrive to breathe," said George. "It looks
ugly. If it had but a brain and a tongue it could tell tales."

"Come," said Helen. "I don't know how it is, but I don't like the
look of it myself now. Let us get into the open air again."