That bit of the room hasn't been disturbed since the Flood! Now those drawers'-- he pointed--'might be worth looking at.' She hurried towards them.

But the Squire, instead of helping her in her search, resumed his walk up and down, muttering to himself.

As for her, she was on the verge of laughter, the laughter that comes from nerves and fatigue; for she had had a long day's work and was really tired.

The first drawer she opened was packed with papers, a few arranged in something like order by her predecessor, the London University B.A., but the greater part of them in confusion.

They mostly related to a violent controversy between the Squire and various archaeological experts with regard to some finds in the Troad a year or two before the war, in which the Squire had only just escaped a serious libel suit, whereof indeed all the preliminaries were in the drawer.
On the very top of the drawer, however, was a conveyance of a small outlying portion of the Mannering estate, which the Squire had sold to a neighbour only a year before this date.