“You see how large a creature it must have been,” she finished, “the forehead hangs quite low, but I can’t touch the tip of the under branch of this antler.”  She made the effort as she spoke, and reaching up on tiptoe, caught at the antler to steady herself.  It swung a little on one side, and she stood looking at the hole torn in the tapestry by Stephen’s gun on that day, when he had gone into the woods in desperate mood.  It had been covered, and no one had noticed it, unless, possibly, the servants in dusting, but, if so, they had not told of the accident, not wishing to run the risk of being blamed for it.

“Did I do that?” asked Elizabeth.  It seemed to her as if to have injured an Archdale to the value of a pin would be intolerable.

“No indeed,” said Edmonson.  “I saw it just as you moved.  The antler is smooth here, see.”  And he made her pass her hand over the polished surface above the tear.  “Perhaps there is some roughness in the wall,” he added, “it may be a nail under the tapestry that somebody found out before we came.”

She reached up eagerly.

“No,” she said, “something must have struck against it and caught it, for so far from being rough here, it’s hollow.  I can put my finger into it; it is one of the openings between the beams.”  They went on talking while Elizabeth’s finger was unconsciously tapping the wall through the torn hanging.  All at once she broke off in the midst of what she was saying to cry, “Why, there certainly is something very strange here; it is like the canvas of a picture.  Touch it, and see if it does not feel so to you.”

Edmonson reached up his hand as she withdrew hers.  His eyes seemed to scintillate as he felt the surface of the canvas under his finger; his face flushed deeply; it was with effort that he restrained a jubilant cry, and his tones betrayed a triumph that he could not hide, while excitement broke through his barriers of measured words.

“Really, we must look into this,” he said.  “This may be El Dorado to—­some of us.  Let us wager, Mistress Royal, whom it most concerns, you, or me.”

“I suppose it’s some old family portrait and belongs to the Colonel,” she answered.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said, waiving the question of the wager as she had done.  “Don’t you propose to ask him?”

Elizabeth looked amazed, then flushed deeply as she realized her imprudence in having spoken of the canvas.

“Certainly not,” she answered.  “I don’t see how what Colonel Archdale has on his walls concerns me.”

“I should think a possible daughter-in-law would feel somewhat differently.”  She winced, then answered coolly; “She ought not.”

“Well, at least, I am curious.  I own it.  I must see what we have unearthed here.  Won’t you ask the Colonel to show us his private portrait gallery?  He will do anything for you, I notice.”

“Certainly not,” she answered.