“Take it!” he cried. “It opens the box of the wheel. But first lower the sluice and turn the race into the further channel. You will see a rope dangling inside in the darkness. Hold on to it and work the wheel round with your hands till a float projecting a little beyond its fellows comes opposite you. In this you’ll find a slit cut, ending in an eye-hole. Pass the rope, as it dangles, into this hole, and keep it in place by a turn of the iron button that’s fixed underneath the slit. Now step on to the broad float, never letting go the rope, and the weight of your body will turn the wheel, carrying you downward till a knot in the rope stops your descent.”
“What then, dad?”
“My son—you’ll see the place that for twenty years has held the secret of my fortune.”
CHAPTER XLV.
I MAKE A DESCENT.
If it had many a time occurred to me, since first I heard of the jar of coins, that the secret of their concealment was connected somehow within the room of silence, it must have done so from that old association of my father with a place that the rest of us so dreaded and avoided. The scorn of superstitious terror that he showed in his choice; the certainty that none would dream of looking there; the encouragement his own mysterious actions gave to the sense of a haunting atmosphere that seemed ever to hang about the neighborhood of the room—these were all so many justifications of the wisdom of his choice. Now I understood the secret of that everlasting lubrication; for had anything happened, when he might chance to be absent, to choke or damage the structure of the ancient wheel, the stoppage or ruin ensuing might have laid bare the hiding-place to any curious eye; for, as part of his general policy, I conclude, no veto except the natural one of dread was ever laid on our entering the room itself if we wished to.
“Well,” I said, stifling a sigh that in itself would have seemed a breach of confidence, “when am I to do my first oiling, father?”
“It wasn’t touched yesterday, Renalt. From the first I have not failed to do it once, at least, in the twenty-four hours.”
“You would like me to go now—at once?”
“Ah! If you will.”
“Very well.”