basement
where in a few weeks there would be a very complete machine-shop and
carpentry room. Then they found a stairway that led to the upper floors
and scampered up it.

"Oh, Jerry Travis, I _wish_ you could see yourself," laughed Gyp as they
paused on the third floor.

"Your face is dirty, too," Jerry retorted.

"Isn't this fun? It doesn't seem a bit like school, does it? I wonder if
they're ever going to use these rooms. Let's play hide-and-seek. I'll
blind and count twenty and you hide and we mustn't make a _sound_!"
which, you know, is a very hard thing to do when one is playing
hide-and-seek.

Gyp's charm--and there was much charm in this lanky girl--lay in her
irrepressible spirits. Gyp was certain--and every boy and girl of her
acquaintance knew it--to find an opportunity for "fun" in the most
unpromising circumstances. No one but Gyp could have known what fun it
would be to play hide-and-seek in the halls and rooms of the third floor
of Highacres--especially when one had to step very softly and bite one's
lips to keep back any sound!

It was Jerry's turn to blind. She leaned her arm against the narrow
frame of a panel painting of George Washington that was set in the wall
at a turn in the corridor. As she rested her face against her arm she
felt the picture move ever so slightly under her pressure. Startled, she
stepped back. Slowly, as though pushed by an invisible hand, the panel
swung out into the corridor.

"_Gyp_----" cried Jerry so sharply that Gyp appeared from her
hiding-place in a twinkling. "Look--what I did!" Jerry felt as though
the entire building might slowly and sedately collapse around her.

"For goodness' sake," cried Gyp, staring. She swung the panel out. "It's
a _door_! Jerry Travis, _it's a secret door_!" She put her head through
the narrow opening. "Jerry----" she reached back an eager hand.
"Look--it's a stairway--a secret stairway!"

Jerry put her head in. Enough light filtered through a crack above so
that the girls could make out the narrow winding steps. They were very
steep and only broad enough for one person to squeeze through.

"Come on, Jerry, let's----"

"Gyp, you don't know where it'll take you----" Jerry suddenly remembered
their poor princess in her dungeon.

"Silly--nothing could hurt us! Come on. Close the panel--there, like
that. I'll go first." She led the way, Jerry tiptoeing gingerly behind
her.

The door at the top gave under Gyp's push and to their am