h panel met the eye when you pulled
aside the sheets of writing-paper in their receptacle to investigate.
But the lesson of this world, and of the desk as a part of it, is that
appearances are not to be trusted. The guile of those old desk-makers
passes belief.

I will expose it. In the pen-tray lay a sort of brass nail, as long as
your little finger, and blunt at the end. Now take the sand-bottle from
its hole. In one corner of the bottom thereof you will see a minute
aperture, just big enough to admit the seemingly useless brass nail.
Stick it in and press hard. With an abrupt noise that makes you jump, if
you are four or five years old, that smooth, unsuspected strip of
panel starts violently forward (propelled by a released spring) and
reveals--what? Nothing less than the fronts of two minute drawers. They
fit in underneath the pen-tray, and might remain undiscovered for a
hundred years unless you had the superhuman wit to divine the purpose of
the brass nail. The drawers contain diamonds, probably, or some closely
folded document making you the heir to a vast estate. As a matter of
fact, I don't know what they contained; the surprise of the drawers
themselves was enough for me. I need not add that I did not guess the
riddle myself; but nothing that I can call to mind impressed me more
than when, one day, my father solved it for me with his little brass
wand. At intervals, afterwards, I was allowed to work the miracle
myself, always with the same thrill of mysterious delight. The desk was
human to me; it was alive.

There were little square covers for the ink and sand-bottles; and on
the under sides of these were painted a pair of faces; very ruddy in the
cheeks they were, with staring eyes and smiling mouths; and one of them
wore a pair of black side-whiskers. They were done by my father, with
oil--colors filched from my mother's paint-box. They seemed to me
portraits of the people who lived in the desk; evidently they enjoyed
their existence hugely. And when I considered that the desk was also
somehow instrumental in the production of stories--such as the Snow
Image--of a delectable and magical character, the importance to my mind
of the whole contrivance may be conceived. When I grew beyond child's
estate, I learned that it had also assisted at the composition of The
Scarlet Letter. If ever there were a haunted writing-desk, this should
have been it; but the ghosts have long since carried it away, whither I
kno