le and
place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the
staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too
happy to see a spark of light scintillate into life in the immeasurable
darkness.

She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once
officers in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had
been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening,
as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van
Broecklyn had told her, but she was warned to be careful in traversing
it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall
till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner
turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak
of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up
door. The paper should be somewhere near this streak.

All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light
were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was
gripping her throat should not take shape! If things would remain
shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy
suggestion upon her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passageway
through which she had just struggled, was not to be found here. Whether
it was the effect of that small flame flickering at the top of the
staircase behind her, or of some change in her own powers of seeing,
surely there was a difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were
becoming visible--the air was no longer blank--she could see--Then
suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a window. It
was small and all but invisible, being covered on the outside with
vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a century. But some small
gleams from the starlight night came through, making phantasms out of
ordinary things, which unseen were horrible enough, and half seen choked
her heart with terror.

"I cannot bear it," she whispered to herself even while creeping
forward, her hand upon the wall. "I will close my eyes" was her next
thought. "I will make my own darkness," and with a spasmodic forcing of
her lids together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece,
where she knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.

This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind t