er and nearer day by day,
a strange thing happened.

At the end of the garden, encroaching partly upon a corner of it, and
opening into the lane that bounded it on the other side of the hedge,
stood the stable belonging to the house.

It had been put to no use since my father's time, and was now so
thoroughly out of repair that I resolved to have it pulled down and
rebuilt before letting it to strangers. In the meantime, I went down
there one morning with a workman before the work of demolition
was begun.

We had some difficulty to get in, for the lock and hinges were rusted,
and the floor within was choked with fallen rubbish. At length we
forced an entrance. I thought I had never seen a more dreary interior.
My father's old chaise was yet standing there, with both wheels off. The
mouldy harness was dropping to pieces on the walls. The beams were
festooned with cobwebs. The very ladder leading to the loft above was so
rotten that I scarcely dared trust to it for a footing.

Having trusted to it, however, I found myself in a still more ruinous
and dreary hole. The posts supporting the roof were insecure; the tiles
were all displaced overhead; and the rafters showed black and bare
against the sky in many places. In one corner lay a heap of mouldy
straw, and at the farther end, seen dimly through the darkness, a pile
of old lumber, and--by Heaven! the pagoda-canopy of many colors, and the
little Chevalier's Conjuring Table!

I could scarcely believe my eyes. My poor Hortense! Here, at last, were
some relics of her father; but found in how strange a place, and by how
strange a chance!

I had them dragged out into the light, all mildewed and cob-webbed as
they were; whereupon an army of spiders rushed out in every direction, a
bat rose up, shrieking, and whirled in blind circles overhead. In a
corner of the pagoda we found an empty bird's-nest. The table was small,
and could be got out without much difficulty; so I helped the workman to
carry it down the ladder, and sending it on before me to the house,
sauntered back through the glancing shadows of the acacia-leaves, musing
upon the way in which these long-forgotten things had been brought to
light, and wondering how they came to be stored away in my own stable.

"Do you know anything about it, Collins?" I said, coming up suddenly
behind him in the hall.

"About what, sir?" asked that respectable servant, looking round with
some perplexity, as if in search of the