to hold
the bolt, and with a creaking noise of rusty hinges the door slowly
opened to his steady pull. Nothing appeared but a wall of plank! He
gave it a push; it yielded: another door, close-fitting, and without
any fastening, flew open, revealing a small closet or press, and on the
opposite side of it a third door. This he could not at once open. It
was secured, however, with a common lock, which cost him scarcely any
trouble. It opened on a little room, of about nine feet by seven. He
went in. It contained nothing but an old-fashioned secretary or bureau,
and a seat like a low music-stool.

"It may have been a vestry for the priest!" thought Donal; "but it must
have been used later than the chapel, for this desk is not older than
the one at The Mains, which mistress Jean said was made for her
grandmother!"

Then how did it get into the place? There was no other door! Above the
bureau was a small window, or what seemed a window doubtful with dirt;
but door there was not! It was not too large to enter by the oak door,
but it could not have got to it along any of the passages he had come
through! It followed that there must, and that not so very long ago,
have been another entrance to the place in which he stood!

He turned to look at the way he had himself come: it was through a
common press of painted deal, filling the end of the little room, there
narrowed to about five feet. When the door in the back of it was shut,
it looked merely a part of the back of the press.

He turned again to the bureau, with a strange feeling at his heart. The
cover was down, and on it lay some sheets of paper, discoloured with
dust and age. A pen lay with them, and beside was an ink-bottle of the
commonest type, the ink in powder and flakes. He took up one of the
sheets. It had a great stain on it. The bottle must have been
overturned! But was it ink? No; it stood too thick on the paper. With a
gruesome shiver Donal wetted his finger and tried the surface of it: a
little came off, a tinge of suspicious brown. There was writing on the
paper! What was it? He held the faded lines close to the candle. They
were not difficult to decipher. He sat down on the stool, and read
thus--his reading broken by the stain: there was no date:--

"My husband for such I will--blot--are in the sight of God--blot--men
why are you so cruel what--blot--deserve these terrors--blot--in
thought have I--blot--hard upon me to think of another."

Here the writ