The girls were mainly useful in taking up and turning the matting, now somewhat decayed by age, and investigating those nooks and shelves already discovered. But they found little more than Mildred had done during her first exploration, and the men who were testing the wall met with no encouragement at all. Aside from the two cleverly constructed openings—one into the nursery and one into the garden—the blocks which composed the wall seemed every one solid and immovable and resisted every attempt to wrest them from their places.