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 clue 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, enclosing 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 pen-knife--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 up-stairs
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
stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down on my knees on
the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could hear my own heart
beating so loud that it quite