What was I to think of her? What was I to think of myself? And what would the story tell me to warrant the loss of what might have proved a most valuable hour? I had not answered these questions when she reëntered with a bundle in her hand of discolored—I should almost call them mouldered—sheets of much crumpled paper.
"These—" she began; then, seeing me look at them with something like suspicion, she paused until she caught my eye, when she added gravely, "these came to me from Mrs. Ocumpaugh. How she got them you will have to ask her. I should say, judging from appearances—" Here she took a seat opposite me at a small table near which I had been placed—"that they must have been found in some old chest or possibly in some hidden drawer of one of those curious antique desks of which more than one was discovered in the garrets of the old house when it was pulled down to give place to the new one."
"Is this letter, as you call it, so old?" I asked.
"It is dated thirty-five years ago."
"The garret must have been a damp one," I remarked.
She flashed me a look—I thought of it more than once afterward—and asked if she should do the reading or I.
"You," I rejoined, all afire with the prospect of listening to her remarkable voice in what I had every reason to believe would call forth its full expression. "Only let me look at those sheets first, and understand as perfectly as I may, just what it is you are going to read to me."
"It's an explanation written for his heirs by Mr. Ocumpaugh. The story itself," she went on, handing me over the papers she held, "begins abruptly. From the way the sheet is torn across at the top, I judge that the narrative itself was preceded by some introductory words now lacking. When I have read it to you, I will tell you what I think those introductory words were."
I handed back the sheets. There seemed to be a spell in the air—possibly it arose from her manner, which was one to rouse expectation even in one whose imagination had not already been stirred by a visit at night and in more than commonly bewildering company to the place whose dark and hitherto unknown secret I was about to hear.
"I am ready," I said, feeling my strange position, but not anxious to change it just then for any other conceivable one.