an
accidental discovery of mine, made during Mrs. Clayton's first illness,
since which I had always insisted on making up my own bed, much to her
relief.

My conscience so disturbed me on the score of this theft, that I
hastened to secrete my only remaining piece of gold in the glazier's
box; ill-judged, as this appeared to me on reflection. The boy was an
apprentice, evidently, and might else, I thought, at the time, have been
the loser. I feared to add a line, and dared not seek a passing word
with him, so carefully was I watched.

I next examined, with the eye of scientific scrutiny, two massive rulers
that lay on my table, one made of maple-wood, and the other of ebony,
and, having selected the first as most available for my purpose,
prepared to commence the most arduous undertaking of my life--the
careful shaping of a wooden key.

I had read somewhere that, during the French Revolution, a young
peasant-girl, by means of such an instrument, had set at large her
lover, or her brother, in _La Vendee_; having taken with soft wax the
outline of the wards of the lock, in a moment of opportunity.

That day my work began--three times a failure, but at last successful.
With the aid of putty, gradually allowed to harden I obtained the mould
I desired, in the dead of night, and afterward, whenever privacy, even
for a few minutes, was mine, I drew from my bosom my sacred piece of
sculpture, and worked upon it with knife and chisel alternately, as
devotee never worked on sculptured crucifix. Never shall I forget the
rapture, the ecstasy of that moment, in which, ensconced between my
bed-head and the wall, I slowly turned the key, first thoroughly soaked
in oil, in the morticed wards, and knew, by the slight giving of the
door, that it was unlocked.

Not Ali Baba, when be entered the robbers' cave, and saw the heaps of
gold--all his by the force of one magic word; not Aladdin, when the
genius of the lamp rose to his bidding, bearing salvers of jewels, which
were to purchase for him the hand of the sultan's daughter; not Sindbad,
when he saw the light which led him to the aperture of egress from the
sepulchre in which he had been pent up with his wife's body to die--knew
keener or more triumphant sensations than filled my bosom as I laid that
completed key next my heart, after turning it cautiously backward and
forward in my prison-lock!

I dared not, at that time, draw back the bolt above, that confined it
loosely yet se