eye, when she added gravely,
"these came to me from Mrs. Ocumpaugh. How she got them you will have to
ask her. I should say, judging from appearances--" Here she took a seat
opposite me at a small table near which I had been placed--"that they
must have been found in some old chest or possibly in some hidden drawer
of one of those curious antique desks of which more than one was
discovered in the garrets of the old house when it was pulled down to
give place to the new one."

"Is this letter, as you call it, so old?" I asked.

"It is dated thirty-five years ago."

"The garret must have been a damp one," I remarked.

She flashed me a look--I thought of it more than once afterward--and
asked if she should do the reading or I.

"You," I rejoined, all afire with the prospect of listening to her
remarkable voice in what I had every reason to believe would call forth
its full expression. "Only let me look at those sheets first, and
understand as perfectly as I may, just what it is you are going to read
to me."

"It's an explanation written for his heirs by Mr. Ocumpaugh. The story
itself," she went on, handing me over the papers she held, "begins
abruptly. From the way the sheet is torn across at the top, I judge that
the narrative itself was preceded by some introductory words now
lacking. When I have read it to you, I will tell you what I think those
introductory words were."

I handed back the sheets. There seemed to be a spell in the
air--possibly it arose from her manner, which was one to rouse
expectation even in one whose imagination had not already been stirred
by a visit at night and in more than commonly bewildering company to the
place whose dark and hitherto unknown secret I was about to hear.

"I am ready," I said, feeling my strange position, but not anxious to
change it just then for any other conceivable one.

She drew a deep breath; again fixed me with her strange, compelling
eyes, and with the final remark:

"The present no longer exists, we are back in the seventies--" began
this enthralling tale.

I did not move till the last line dropped from her lips.

XI

THE SECRET OF THE OLD PAVILION

I was as sane that night as I had ever been in my life. I am quite sure
of this, though I had had a merry time enough earlier in the evening
with my friends in the old pavilion (that time-honored retreat of my
ancestors), whose desolation I had thought to dissipate with a little
harmless revelr