fternoon, Davie was full of the curious little place his father
had discovered behind the wall; but, if that was the lost room, he
said, it was not at all worth making such a fuss about: it was nothing
but a big closet, with an old desk-kind of thing in it!

In the afternoon also, the earl went to see his niece. It was the first
time they met after his rude behaviour on her proposal to search for
the lost room.

"What were you doing this morning, uncle?" she said. "There was such a
thumping and banging somewhere in the castle! Davie said you were
determined, he thought, to find the lost room."

"Nothing of the kind, my love," answered the earl. "--I do hope they
will not spoil the stair carrying the stones and mortar down!"

"What was it then, uncle?"

"Simply this, my dear: my late wife, your aunt, and I, had a plan for
taking that closet behind my room on the stair into the room itself. In
preparation, I had a wall built across the middle of the closet, so as
to divide it and make two recesses of it, and act also as a buttress to
the weakened wall. Then your aunt died, and I hadn't the heart to open
the recesses or do anything more in the matter. So one half of the
closet was cut off, and remained inaccessible. But there had been left
in it an old bureau, containing papers of some consequence, for it was
heavy, and intended to occupy the same position after the arches were
opened. Now, as it happens, I want one of those papers, so the wall has
had to come down again."

"But, uncle, what a pity!" said Arctura. "Why did you not open the
arches? The recesses would have been so pretty in that room!"

"I am sorry I did not think of asking you what you would like done
about it, my child! The fact is I never thought of your taking any
interest in the matter; I had naturally lost all mine. You will please
to observe, however, I have only restored what I had myself
disarranged--not meddled with anything belonging to the castle!"

"But now you have the masons here, why not go on, and make a little
search for the lost room?" said Arctura, venturing once more.

"We might pull down the castle and be none the wiser! Bah! the building
up of half the closet may have given rise to the whole story!"

"Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!"

"It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry
back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the
building of that foolish wall."

"Su