“I don’t like it. Someone might take to cleaning this room up.”

“Not without me knowing about it,” said Sabina.

“Isn’t there someplace that would be out of sight?” said Matthew, still looking around the room. “Why don’t we try to loosen one of the stones in the wall, or even one of those shelf stones?”

“Do you think we could?”

“If you—could you go up and bring a chair down here?” asked Matthew. “If I had something to stand on, maybe I could look behind that tallest shelf there and see.”

The next instant Sabina was gone up the nearby stairs, and a minute or two later was crashing back down, clumsily bearing one of the high-backed wooden chairs from the guest Stube.

Matthew set it in place and jumped onto it, standing on his tiptoes and peering over the ledge of stone that was built into the wall.

“I think I could loosen one of these rocks in the wall,” he said, “if I had a knife or implement of some kind.”

“I’ll get a trowel from the gardening room,” said Sabina, and she disappeared again.

This time she was gone four or five minutes, but presently returned with the instrument. She handed it up to Matthew, and he began chipping and knocking at the hardened dirt around one of the wall stones. In three or four minutes he pulled out a chunk of rock about three times the size of his fist.

“Nothing to it!” he exclaimed, showing Sabina his prize.

“Will the box fit into the hole?” she asked.

“Easily! Hand it up.”

She picked it off the ground where he had set it and gave it to him. He shoved it into the cavity in the wall, then jumped down off the chair.

They both looked up.

“You see,” said Matthew, “the ledge hides it completely. You can’t see a thing!”

Sabina jumped onto the chair so she could see the box in its new home.

He stooped down, put the rock on the ground, and began whacking it with the trowel.

“What are you doing?” asked Sabina.

“Breaking the stone in half,” he answered.

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

He went on, and in a minute or two he had chipped enough off the rock for his purposes. He stood on the chair again, replaced the half-stone in the front of the tiny cave he had made, then with his fingers squeezed dirt in around its edges, brushing and blowing at it to make it look undisturbed.

Again he stepped down.

“There,” he said with satisfaction. “Even if someone was to look straight at it, they would never see where we have hidden the box.”

“Let me look,” said Sabina.

She stood up on the chair.

“It’s wonderful, Matthew… perfect!”

She stepped back to the ground while he wiped at the dirt on his hands.