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CHAPTER XV
THE EAVESDROPPERS AND THE PLOT

GYSBERT did not keep his sister long in doubt as to the use he proposed to make of Alonzo de Rova’s Toledo blade. The first thing he did caused her considerable wonder and not a little alarm. In one corner of the room he pried up the tiles of the flooring for the space of a square foot, and cut away the planking underneath, leaving nothing but some thin lath and plaster between them and the room below.

“Oh, Gysbert! what art thou doing!” asked Jacqueline in distress. “We will be discovered and all will be lost!”

“Not at all!” said Gysbert as he covered up his work by carefully replacing everything he had removed. “No one will suspect what I have done, and through this hole we

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