nd led the way, with toilsome
step, and hands outstretched for support to the wall on one side and the
banisters on the other, up the one flight of stairs which communicated
with the bed-room story of the cottage.

He followed close behind her: and was standing by her side, when she
opened a door, and pointed into a room, telling him to take what he
found there, and then go--she cared not whither, so long as he went from
her.

She descended the stairs again, as he entered the room. There was a
close, faint, airless smell in it. Cobwebs, pendulous and brown with
dirt, hung from the ceiling. The grimy window-panes saddened all the
light that poured through them faintly. He looked round him, and saw no
furniture anywhere; no sign that the room had ever been lived in, ever
entered even, for years and years past. He looked again, more carefully:
and detected, in one dim corner, something covered with dust and dirt,
which looked like a small box.

He pulled it out towards the window. Dust flew from it in clouds.
Loathsome, crawling creatures crept from under it and from off it. He
stirred it with his foot still nearer to the faint light, and saw that
it was a common deal-box, corded. He looked closer, and through cobwebs,
and dead insects, and foul stains of all kinds, spelt out a name that
was painted on it: MARY GRICE.

At the sight of that name, and of the pollution which covered it, he
paused, silent and thoughtful; and, at the same moment, heard the parlor
door below, locked. He stooped hastily, took up the box by the cord
round it, and left the room. His hand touched a substance, as he grasped
the cord, which did not feel like wood. Examining the box by the clearer
light falling on the landing from a window in the roof, he discovered a
letter nailed to the cover. There was something written on it; but the
paper was dusty, the ink was faded by time, and the characters were hard
to decipher. By dint of perseverance, however, he made out from them
this inscription: "Justification of my conduct towards my niece: to be
read after my death. Joanna Grice."

As he passed the parlor door, he heard her voice, reading. He stopped
and listened. The words that reached his ears seemed familiar to them;
and yet he knew not, at first, what book they came from. He listened a
little longer; his recollections of his boyhood and of home helped him;
and he knew that the book from which Joanna Grice was reading aloud to
herself was the