must untangl

d a knot for

her face to greet one's waking vision could not be desired. She managed, by prompt and clever measures, to keep off Mrs. Roberts till I had had my breakfast, and risen and been dressed. It was matter of great astonishment to me to f

Our distaste for Mrs. Roberts was potent in putting us on as good terms as young lady and young lady's maid could well be, and there is a sort of freemasonry in

in the time of Mr. Rutledge's father, and was called the finest house in the country. Loads of money, she informed me, he had spent upon it; workmen had been sent for, hundreds of miles, to do the carving and paint the walls, and no money and

Mr. Rutledge did

besides the farm hands. Nothing to do but stand Mrs. Roberts' preaching from morning till night. She only wished she'd lived in the old times that her father talked about, when Rutledge was the gayest of the gay. (Her father, she explained, had been gardener there for thirty years, and had lived on the place from a boy.) Such fine doi

e others? Is Mr. Rutle

ichard died when he was just twenty-four-a month after his father

er, Alice, what

r; something must have happened very strange, for there's always a mystery about Miss Alice. The old servants on the pla

my curiosity thoroughly excited, "w

r to come home. All that night before he died, he would call 'Alice! Alice!' till you could hear it all over the house. And father says," continued the girl, in a still lower tone, "that sometimes of wild dark nights, when he's coming past the house late from his work, he could swear for all the world that he hears the ol

t all you know of her? Tell me all

was, and her eyes like violets, so large and blue

id quickly; "surely you

thing she had seen she'd never told anybody about; she didn't know whether

robe stood in the middle of the space between the corner room on the east, and the corner room on the west, of the hall; and none but a very inquiring mind like Kitty's would have investigated the exact dimensions of these rooms, whether they met and were separated but by a partition, or whether a distinct room, the width of the hall, and corresponding to Mr. Rutledge's dressing-room at the opposite

ooking and rearranging the identical wardrobe in the hall, that had so long been the fascination and torment of little Kitty, who, it may well be supposed, was "on hand" during the operation. Demure and useful, she made herself very officious in assisting Mrs. Roberts in her labors, standing, for hours together, to be loaded with the heavy piles of rich old curtains from the shelves, faded long ago, and antiquated table-covers, heavy Marseilles coverlets, that must have made the sleepers of old time ache t

st haste, with the intelligence that a pair of the farm-horses had run away, and done no end of damage to themselves and to the man who was driving them, who was now lying below the barn in a state of insensibility, and Mrs. Roberts' assistance was instantly required. It w

ss the hall, and, possessing herself of the key of the corresponding room, darted back again and applied it to the lock. It fitted, and turned in it; the knob yielded to her eager grasp, and, too near the completion of her wishes now to pause, she wound her lithe figure through the narrow aperture, and pushing open the door, stood within the mysterious room! For a moment, Kitty's heart beat quick; an awe crept over her; for a moment she longed to be out in the sunshine again. But her elastic spirits and indomitable curiosity soon triumphed over the transitory dread inspired by the darkness and solemnity of the deserted chamber, and the close, dead atmosphere, and the unearthly stillness; and, gaining courage every m

apparent that some one had occupied it, lying on the outside; the pillows were displaced and crushed, and the coverlet was deranged. That, since the occupation of that some one, the room had never been arranged or touched, seemed evident, from the confusion and disorder that prevailed. The door of the wardrobe on the right was partly open, a

hosts of some flowers that fell to dust at Kitty's touch. But what most excited her wonder, was a picture, that, with its face to the wall, was placed on the floor near the door. It evidently did not belong to the furniture of the room, and had been

tamped themselves indelibly upon Kitty's retentive memory. It must have been an odd sight; the eager child, in that dark, uncanny room, upon her hands and kne

on the floor. She disengaged her feet from the impediment that had caused her fall; it was a long ribbon, and a locket was attached to it; hastily thrusting them into her bosom, she picked herself up, and sprang toward the door. Steps were already mounting the stairs; a voice she knew too well was already audible; the unused lock grated and creaked cruelly under the nervous hands that struggled with it; but, with the strength of terror, she mastered it at last-locked it, dropped the key in her pocket, slipped through the narrow sp

sent her candleless to bed; and she, with suspended breath and strained ear, would creep past the mysterious chamber to her own little loft above, to lie whole hours awake and trembling. Her fert

ssly, "does no one else know of th

om, I'm pretty sure. I've watched it close enough, and the wardrobe never has been stirred since that day I did it, six years ago last spring. Hardly any one goes to that end of the hall; the corner rooms are

locket you pick

that night, when I got upstairs, I bolted the door and loo