on I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got
to the steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary,
but my hand did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the
steps first, and softly one foot found the tread and then another. I had
only three more to climb and then my right hand, now feeling its way
along the wall, would be free to strike a match. I climbed the three
steps and was steadying myself against the door for a final plunge, when
something happened--something so strange, so unexpected, and so
incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The door
was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I could feel the
chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment this chill increased;
the gap was growing--a presence was there--a presence before which I
sank in a small heap upon the landing. Would it advance? Had it
feet--hands? Was it a presence which could be felt?

"Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted my
head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice--a human voice--my
mother's voice--so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
touched her.

"She was speaking to my father. I knew it from the tone. She was saying
words which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my
youthful mind that I have never forgotten them.

"'I have come!' she said. 'They think I have fled the house and are
looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
of looking here for either you or me?'

"_Here!_ The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some
few minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they
were _in_ it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this
awoke in my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of
the house's law would be possible.

"I heard my father's answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
realized that he spoke from a distance,--that he was at one end of the
room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to subdue
my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my
presence, the darkness--I should rather say the blackness of the place
yielded to a flash of lightning--heat lightning, all glare and no
sound--and I caught an instantaneous vision of my father's figure
standing with gleaming things abo