here anything in the room
which--either in inches, feet, or yards--answered to "5 along" and "4
across"? Nothing. I put the rule back in my pocket--measurement was no
good, evidently. Was there anything in the room that would count up to 5
one way and 4 another, seeing that nothing would measure up to it? I had
got obstinately persuaded by this time that the letter must be in the
room--principally because of the trouble I had had in looking after
it. And persuading myself of that, I took it into my head next, just
as obstinately, that "5 along" and "4 across" must be the right clew to
find the letter by--principally because I hadn't left myself, after all
my searching and thinking, even so much as the ghost of another guide
to go by. "Five along"--where could I count five along the room, in any
part of it?

Not on the paper. The pattern there was pillars of trellis-work and
flowers, inclosing a plain green ground--only four pillars along the
wall and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs
or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The
fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any
rate! Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand.
Every way that "5 along" and "4 across" could be reckoned on those
unlucky fringes I reckoned on them--probed with my penknife--scratched
with my nails--crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter;
and the time was getting on--oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr.
Davager's room that morning.

I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I hardly
cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little cloud of dust rose
at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.

"Hullo!" thought I, "my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy here.
Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best bedrooms at the
Gatliffe Arms." Carpet! I had been jumping up on the bed, and staring
up at the walls, but I had never so much as given a glance down at the
carpet. Think of me pretending to be a lawyer, and not knowing how to
look low enough!

The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time, had evidently began
in a drawing-room; then descended to a coffee-room; then gone upstairs
altogether to a bedroom. The ground was brown, and the pattern was
bunches of leaves and roses speckled over the ground at regular
distances. I reckoned up the bunches. Ten along the room--eight across
it. When I had