Ten along the room--eight across it.

When I had stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down on my knees on the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could hear my own heart beating so loud that it quite frightened me.
I looked narrowly all over the bunch, and I felt all over it with the ends of my fingers, and nothing came of that.

Then I scraped it over slowly and gently with my nails.

My second finger-nail stuck a little at one place.

I parted the pile of the carpet over that place, and saw a thin slit which had been hidden by the pile being smoothed over it--a slit about half an inch long, with a little end of brown thread, exactly the color of the carpet ground, sticking out about a quarter of an inch from the middle of it.