Matthew knelt down, pulled Sabina’s foot toward him, and cupped his fingers into a makeshift ladder rung. “Come on, stand on my hand and I’ll hoist you up to see if you can see anything.”

Sabina did so, peering and feeling about and shining her light toward the corners, discovering nothing but dust and dirt.

“Aw, shucks!” said Matthew. “I know it’s around here somewhere.”

“Matthew!” laughed Sabina. “I tell you there’s no key!”

“Well let’s go find the dungeon without it then!” he said, leading the way back into the corridor under the house.

“I tell you, it’s no use,” said Sabina, getting up and following him. “Papa’s been over every inch of these walls, up and down both sides of the hall all the way from one end of the house to the other.”

“Then how about the floor… or the ceiling?” suggested Matthew, inching his way along the dark, damp, dirt corridor, scanning here and there with his eyes.

“The floor?” repeated Sabina.

“Sure, maybe there’s another level down below this and there’s a trapdoor over the stairway all covered over with layers of dirt.”

Sabina laughed.

“Dungeons are always deep down in low hidden cellars,” said Matthew. “I bet that’s it! The dungeon’s below us!” Immediately Matthew fell to his hands and knees and began digging with his fingers in the dirt.

Sabina continued laughing.

“You are silly, Matthew! There’s nothing there but dirt. Even if there was something to find, you would have to go over every centimeter of the whole corridor to find it.”

“Do you have a rake, or a shovel or hoe? If we started from one end and worked our way to the other, digging down a few inches, I’m sure we’d find a trapdoor somewhere.”

As he spoke he continued to dig about.

“Hey, what’s this!” he exclaimed, digging now more furiously. “I’ve found something!”

Sabina knelt down beside him and looked.

“Feel right there,” he said, taking her hand and guiding it into the dirt where he had been digging.

“It’s nothing but a big stone,” she said after a moment. “See… here are its edges.” She pushed at the dirt, and after a moment her efforts yielded the outline of an irregularly shaped rock buried in the earth below.

“All right, all right, maybe the trapdoor’s not right here,” said Matthew, standing up. “But I bet there’s one someplace!”

“I’ll tell Papa your theory,” laughed Sabina. “In the meantime, he won’t want the whole floor dug up. Come on, let’s go to the top floor. I want to show you the rooms up there again.”

“And the armory?” said Matthew, following her.

“If you like!”

She ran on ahead, then stopped.

“Here’s the stairway up to the guest bedroom, where I fooled you last time,” she said. “Let’s go up here.”