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 nominative.
I pointed to the table, now being carried into the dismantled dining-room.
Collins smiled--he had a remarkably civil, apologetic way of smiling behind his hand, as if it were a yawn or a liberty.
"Oh, sir," said he, "don't you remember? To be sure, you were quite a young gentleman at that time--but---"
"But what?" I interrupted, impatiently.
"Why, sir, that table once belonged to a poor little conjuring chap who called himself Almond Pudding, and died...."