e and breed in the half-light of forests; they
must perish as the sun follows the falling trees, creeping ever
inexorably westward.

Somberly brooding, I turned and descended into the cellar. There was
little light here, and I cared not to strike flint. Groping about I
touched with my foot remains of bottles of earthenware, then made my
way to the door again and began to ascend.

The stairway seemed steeper and more tortuous to me. As I climbed I
became uneasy at its length. Then, in a second, it flashed on me that I
had blundered upon a secret stairway[1] leading upward from the cellar.
At this same instant my head brushed the ceiling; I gave a gentle push,
and a trap-door lifted, admitting me to another flight of stairs, up
which I warily felt my way. This must end in another trap-door on the
second floor--I understood that--and began to reach upward, feeling
about blindly until my hands fell on a bolt. This I drew; it was not
rusty, and did not creak, and, as I slid it back, to my astonishment my
fingers grew wet and greasy. The bolt had been _recently oiled_!

[1] Evidences of this stairway still exist in the ancient house of
Walter Butler.

Now all alert as a gray wolf sniffing a strange trail that cuts his
own, I warily lifted the trap to a finger's breadth. The crack of light
dazzled me; gradually my blurred sight grew clearer; I saw a low,
oblong window under the eaves of the steep, pointed roof; and, through
it, the sunlight falling on the bare floor of a room all littered with
papers, torn letters, and tape-bound documents of every description.
Could these be the Butler papers? I had heard that all documents had
been seized by the commissioners after the father and son had fled. But
the honorable commissioners of sequestration had evidently never
suspected this stairway.

In spite of myself I started! _How_ had I, then, entered it? Somebody
must have mounted it before me, leaving the secret door open in the
cellar, and I, groping about, had chanced upon it. But whoever left it
open must have been acquainted with the house--an intimate here, if not
one of the family!

When had this unknown entered? Was any one here _now_? At the thought my
skin roughened as a dog bristles. Was I alone in this house?

Listening, motionless, nostrils dilated, every sense concentrated on
that narrow crack of light, I crouched there. Then, very gradually, I
raised the trap, higher, higher, laying it back against