tim circling around the middle of the room.

I was sorry for Beautiful Dog, for my sleek, petted, purring pussies
had turned into raging black tornadoes edged with a lightning of
claws. If the aristocratic Black Family had been raised in
Hooligan's Alley itself, on the soft side of the ash-bins, they
couldn't have behaved more villainously. Alas! they were _cats_,
just as people are people.

I snatched up the brass-headed poker, the readiest thing to my hand.
I merely wished to shoo off the Blacks with it. But as I rose from
my chair with a _scat_! upon my lips, Beautiful Dog, seeing out of
the tail of his eye a chance to escape, dashed headlong into me. He
came with such force that I fell backward, and the poker flew out of
my hand and came _crack_! upon the sacred tiles of Hynds House
library. There was an ominous clatter, for no less than the Father
of his Country himself had fallen out of his place. At the same
instant Beautiful Dog gained the door, with both cats upon his hind
quarters; with one prolonged yell of terror he made for safety and
Mary Magdalen.

I picked myself and the tile up. Thank Heaven, it wasn't broken. The
blow had loosened the cement that held it in place, and where it had
been was a small square hole.

I looked at that hole doubtfully. There oughtn't to be any hole
there at all. That was a curious way to fix tiles, such precious
tiles as ours. I slipped my hand in and tentatively tested the black
wall, and discovered that the other tiles, as might be expected, had
been properly put in; that is, against a solid background.

I put my hand farther into the aperture. It was larger than might be
expected, and most cunningly contrived--a hollow space some ten
inches in width, and possibly a foot deep. There was something in
it.

Now I am mortally afraid of rats and mice, and what I had touched
had the sleazy feel of frayed silk. It might be a rat's nest! I took
a sliver of lightwood from the fire, and with this examined the
black interior, before I ventured my fingers again. It wasn't a
rat's nest in the corner. It was a package. A package, or rather a
sizable buckskin bag carefully tied together with thongs of the same
material, and this wrapped in a piece of silk that tore and went to
pieces even as I fingered it.

Even then I didn't guess! I thought it was, perhaps, a Revolutionary
hoard, maybe such another collection of old coins as we had found in
the room without windows.

The silk