Warlock o' Glenwarlock Part 58

Cosmo went and fetched his tool-basket, and set to work. The part.i.tion was strong, of good sound pine, neither rotton nor worm-eaten--inch-boards matched with groove and tongue, not quite easy to break through. But having, with a centre-bit and brace, bored several holes near each other, he knocked out the pieces between, and introducing a saw, soon made an opening large enough to creep through. A cold air met him. as if from a cellar, and on the other side he seemed in another climate.

Feeling with his hands, for there was scarcely any light, he discovered that the s.p.a.ce he had entered was not a closet, inasmuch as there was no shelf, or anything in it, whatever. It was certainly most like the end of a deserted pa.s.sage. His feet told him the floor was of wood, and his hands that the walls were of rough stone without plaster, cold and damp. With outstretched arms he could easily touch both at once. Advancing thus a few paces, he struck his head against wood, felt panels, and concluded a door.

There was a lock, but the handle was gone. He went back a little, and threw himself against it. Lock and hinges too gave way, and it fell right out before him. He went staggering on, and was brought up by a bed, half-falling across it. He was in the spare room, the gruesome centre of legend, the dwelling of ghostly awe. Not yet apparently had its numen forsaken it, for through him pa.s.sed a thrill at the discovery. From his father's familiar room to this, was like some marvellous transition in a fairy-tale; the one was home, a place of use and daily custom; the other a hollow in the far-away past, an ancient cave of Time, full of withering history.

Its windows being all to the north and long unopened, it was l.u.s.treless, dark, and musty with decay.

Cosmo stood motionless a while, gazing about him as if, from being wide awake, he suddenly found himself in a dream. Then he turned as if to see how he had got into it. There lay the door, and there was the open pa.s.sage! He lifted the door: the other side of it was covered with the same paper as the wall, from which it had brought with it several ragged pieces. He went back, crept through, and rejoined his father.

In eager excitement, he told him the discovery he had made.

"I heard the noise of the falling door," said his father quietly.

"I should not wonder now," he added, "if we discovered a way through to the third block."

"Oh, father," said Cosmo with a sigh, "what a comfort this door would have so often been! and now, just as we are like to leave the house forever, we first discover it!"

"How well we have got on without it!" returned his father.

"But what could have made grandfather close it up?"

"There was, I believe, some foolish ghost-story connected with it--perhaps the same old Grannie told you."

"I wonder grandmamma never spoke of it!"

"My impression is she never cared to refer to it."

"I daresay she believed it."

"Weel, I daursay! I wadna won'er!"

"What for did ye ca' 't foolish, father?"

"Jist for thouchtlessness, I doobt, But wha could hae imagined to kep a ghaist by paperin' ower a door, whan, gien there be ony trowth i' sic tales, the ghaist gangs throu a stane wa' jist as easy's open air! But surely o' a' fules a ghaist maun be the warst 'a things on aboot a place!"

"Maybe it's to haud away frae a waur. The queer thing, father, to me wad be 'at the ghist, frae bein' a fule a' his life, sud grow a wise man the minute he was deid! Michtna it be a pairt o' his punishment to be garred see hoo things gang on efter he's deid!

What could be sairer, for instance, upon a miser, nor to see his heir gang to the deevil by scatterin' what he gaed to the deevil by gatherin'?"

"'Deed ye're richt eneuch, there, my son!" answered the old man.

Then after a pause he resumed. "It's aye siller or banes 'at fesses them back. I can weel un'erstan' a great reluctance to tak their last leave o' the siller, but for the banes--eh, but I'll be unoo pleased to be rid o' mine!"

"But whaur banes are concernt, hasna there aye been fause play?"

suggested Cosmo.

"Wad it be revenge, than, think ye?"

"It micht be: maist o' the stories o' that kin' en' wi' bringin'

the murderer an' justice acquant. But the human bein' seems in a'

ages to hae a grit dislike to the thoucht o' his banes bein' left lyin' aboot. I hae h'ard gran'mamma say the dirtiest servan' was aye clean twa days o' her time--the day she cam an' the day she gaed."

"Ye hae thoucht mair aboot it nor me, laddie! But what ye say wadna haud wi' the Pa.r.s.ees, 'at lay oot their deid to be devoored by the birds o' the air."

"They swipe up their banes at the last. An', though the livin'

expose the deid, the deid mayna like it."

"I daursay. Ony gait it maun be a fine thing to lea' as little dirt as possible ahin' ye, an' tak nane wi' ye. I wad frain gang clean an' lea' clean!"

"Gien onybody gang clean an' lea' clean, father, ye wull."

"I luik to the Lord, my son.--But noo, whan a body thinks o' 't,"

he went on after a pause, "there wad seem something curious i' thae tales concernin' the auld captain! Sometime we'll tak Grizzie intil oor c.o.o.nsel, an' see hoo mony we can gaither, an' what we can mak o' them whan we lay them a' thegither. Gien the Lord hae't in his min' to keep 's i' this place, yon pa.s.sage may turn oot a great convanience."

"Ye dinna think it wad be worth while openin' 't up direc'ly?"

"I wad bide for warmer weather. I think the room's jist some caller now by rizzon o' 't."

"I'll close't up at ance," said Cosmo.

In a few minutes he had screwed a box-lid over the hole in the part.i.tion, and shut the door of the closet.

"Noo," he said, "I'll gang an' set up the door on the ither side."

Before he went however, he told his father what he had been thinking of, saying, if he approved and was well enough, he should like to go the next day.

"It's no an ill idea," said the laird; "but we'll see what the morn may be like."

When Cosmo entered the great bedroom of the house from the other side, he stood for a moment staring at the open pa.s.sage and prostrate door as if he saw them for the first time, then proceeded to examine the hinges. They were broken; the half of each remained fast to the door-post, the other half to the door. New hinges were necessary; in the meantime he must prop it up. This he did; and before he left the room, as it was much in want of fresh air, he opened all the windows.

His father continuing better through that day, he went to bed early that he might start at sunrise.

CHAPTER LIV.

A GREATER DISCOVERY.

In the middle of the night he was wakened by a loud noise. Its nature he had been too sound asleep to recognize; he only knew it had waked him. He sprang out of bed, was glad to find his father undisturbed, and stood for a few moments wondering. All at once he remembered that he had left the windows of the best bedroom open; the wind had risen, and was now blowing what sailors would call a gale: probably something had been blown down! He would go and see.

Taking a sc.r.a.p of candle, all he had, he crept down the stair and out to the great door.

As he approached that of the room he sought, the faint horror he felt of it when a boy suddenly returned upon him as fresh as ever, and for a moment he hesitated, almost doubting whether he were not dreaming: was he actually there in the middle of the night? But, with an effort he dismissed the folly, was himself again, entering the room, if not with indifference yet with composure. There was just light enough to see the curtains of the terrible bed waving wide in the stream of wind that followed the opening of the door.

He shut the windows, lighted his candle, and then saw the door he had set up so carefully flat on the floor: the chair he had put against it for a b.u.t.tress, he thought, had not proved high enough, and it had fallen down over the top of it. He placed his candle beside it, and proceeded once more to raise it. But, casting his eyes up to mark the direction, he caught a sight which made him lay it down again and rise without it. The candle on the floor shone halfway into the pa.s.sage, lighting up a part of one wall of it, and showing plainly the rough gray stones of which it was built.

Something in the shapes and arrangement of the stones drew and fixed Cosmo's attention. He took the candle, examined the wall, came from the pa.s.sage with his eyes shining, and his lips firmly closed, left the room, and went up a story higher to that over it, still called his. There he took from his old secretary the unintelligible drawing hid in the handle of the bamboo, and with beating heart unfolded it. Certainly its lines did, more or less, correspond with the shapes of those stones! He must bring them face to face!

Down the stair he went again. It was the dead of the night, but every remnant of childhood's awe was gone in the excitement of the hoped discovery. He stood once more in the pa.s.sage, the candle in one hand, the paper in the other, and his eyes going and coming steadily between it and the wall, as if reading the rough stones by some hieroglyphic key. The lines on the paper and the joints of the stones corresponded with almost absolute accuracy.

But another thing had caught his eye--a thing yet more promising, though he delayed examining it until fully satisfied of the correspondence he sought to establish: on one of the stones, one remarkable neither by position nor shape, he spied what seemed the rude drawing of a horse, but as it was higher than his head, and the candle cast up shadows from the rough surfaces, he could not see it well. Now he got a chair, and, standing on it, saw that it was plainly enough a horse, like one a child might have made who, with a gift for drawing, had had no instruction. It was scratched on the stone. Beneath it, legible enough to one who knew them so well, were the lines--

catch your Nag, & pull his Tail in his hind Hele caw a Nail rug his Lugs frae ane anither stand up, & ca' the King yer Brither

How these directions were to be followed with such a horse astheoneon the flat before him would be scanned! Probably the wall must be broken into at that spot. In the meantime he would set up the door again, and go to bed.