for
nothing over this old vestibule. Yet before I left it I gave it another
glance; satisfied myself that its walls were solid; in fact, built of
brick like the house. This on two sides; the door occupied the third and
showed the same unbroken coat of thick, old paint, its surface barely
hidden by the cabinet placed at right angles to it. Enough of it,
however, remained exposed to view to give me an opportunity of admiring
its sturdy panels and its old-fashioned lock. The door was further
secured by heavy pivoted bars extending from jamb to jamb. An
egg-and-dart molding extended all around the casing, where the inner
door had once hung. All solid, all very old-fashioned, but totally
unsuggestive of any reasonable solution of the mystery I had vaguely
hoped it to explain. Was I mistaken in my theory, and must I look
elsewhere for what I still honestly expected to find? Undoubtedly; and
with this decision I turned to leave the recess, when a sensation, of
too peculiar a nature for me readily to understand it, caused me to stop
short, and look down at my feet in an inquiring way and afterward to
lift the rug on which I had been standing and take a look at the floor
underneath. It was covered with carpet, like the rest of the hall,
but this did not disguise the fact that it sloped a trifle toward the
outside wall. Had not the idea been preposterous, I should have said
that the weight of the cabinet had been too much for it, causing it to
sag quite perceptibly at the base-board. But this seemed too improbable
to consider. Old as the house was, it was not old enough for its beams
to have rolled. Yet the floor was certainly uneven, and, what was
stranger yet, had, in sagging, failed to carry the base-board with it.
This I could see by peering around the side of the cabinet. Was it an
important enough fact to call for explanation? Possibly not; yet when
I had taken a short leap up and come down on what was certainly an
unstable floor, I decided that I should never be satisfied till I had
seen that cabinet removed and the floor under it rigidly examined.

Yet when I came to take a look at this projection from the library
window and saw that this floor, like that of the many entrances, was
only the height of one step from the ground, I felt the folly into
which my inquiring spirit had led me, and would have dismissed the whole
subject from my mind if my eyes had not detected at that moment on
one of the tables an unusually thin