Anabella:

I searched through the dry pieces of paper. I could not believe my eyes. I had told Wes about the relevance to all the papers relating to the Order f the Hawk, but neither of us knew much about it. As we exchanged secrets, I continually glanced at the door. Could the symbol there be their emblem? If so, that would give us more clues as to who could be in the society. I told Wes we needed to come the next day, prepared, and with a candle so that we could investigate further. I also planned on teaching Wes how to read; I would never be able to get through all of these papers myself.
Narrator:

Over the next month, Anabella and Wes visited the cottage every day that they could, and Anabella continued to teach Wes how to read. They were almost done with all of the documents, but the information in them had not helped answer their questions. One day they were going to the documents when they discovered something…
Wes:

Anabella and I were reading the papers, or rather Anabella was reading the documents, and I was trying to follow along. But either way, we were both looking at the documents, when Anabella stood up and proceeded in yelling that nothing made any sense. She kept stomping around when she abruptly stopped.
“Did you hear that?” she said, and then stomped again for emphasis. I listened, and hearing nothing out of the ordinary, shook my head. She stomped again and then told me that when she stomped on the floorboards it sounded hollow. I slapped my forehead in understanding. There was a hollow space beneath the house! That only meant one thing to the both of us: more information. She looked around and then smiled knowingly.
“I don’t know how we could have missed this the first time!” she said in excitement. In her hand was a rope. She quickly tugged it and five of the floorboard broke loose from the rest and made a sort of door.
“It’s a secret room!” Anabella’s muffled exclamation was heard as she jumped down through the floorboards and hit the ground with a “thump”.
Anabella:

I surveyed my surrounding in puzzlement. All I could see was fabric! There were gowns with high collars and lacy sleeves, and soft overcoats with shining brass buttons. I gazed at all the finery. Wes landed beside me, a bit more gracefully than I had. He looked around us with a quizzical expression.
“Well, I guess they have to have something to make them seem important. Since I’m guessing they’re everyday people of every rank, they have to have some characters.” He said.
“So you think that maybe they go to the king’s balls and such to retrieve information? What if they have spies in the castle!?” This thought made me ask even more questions that I had no answers to. Why would they need to go to the balls and court events? Nothing made sense.

Just then, the door above us burst open. I jumped in fear and grabbed Wes’ close hand. I pulled him up against the wall and put a finger to my lips. We both quieted our breathing and listened. We heard the footsteps above our heads and moved closer to a corner. The footsteps above out heads moved closer to the entry to the secret door. We had left it open in our excitement.

In a panic, I buried my face into Wes’ shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around me. So we sat there hugging each other when someone jumped down through the hole. He, or she, I couldn’t tell because I had my eyes closed, approached us and held out a hand. Wes removed his one hand from where it was holding me, and grasped the other that was held out to us. We were pulled up and I was forced to lift my head from Wes’ and stare at our captor. It was an older man, and he had shoulder-length auburn hair and was wearing clothes nicer than Wes and I had ever imagined owning.
Wes:

Anabella was so frightened of the man that her slight body was overtaken by tremors. The man pointed up to the hole as if to tell us to go back through it. I let go of Anabella, but still held on to her hand to reassure her that we would be safe.

I climbed up through the hidden entry and pulled Anabella up with me. I was surprised to find four other people surrounding us. There were two middle aged woman, which appeared to be sisters, and had long brown hair and green eyes. The two men were very different though. One of the men was elderly. His skin sagged at his arms and cheeks, but he had the look of wisdom and knowing. The other man looked about twenty-five, and very pompous. He carried himself like a rooster and had a scowl planted upon his face.

As the other man came up through the hole we moved closer to the women, because they looked like the nicest of the bunch. Then, they sat Anabella and I down in the only two chairs and asked us questions.