“Twea year’; same as rest o’ t’ house,” she answered, in a grumbling tone.
“Only two years! It wasn’t shut up long before the family went away, then?” said Olivia, incredulously.
“Not as Ah knaws on,” answered Sarah Wall.
Miss Denison hated an untruth with the impetuous loathing of an honest nature. She would have liked to shake this wretched old woman, who would not be candid on a subject which could not be of the slightest importance to her. Perhaps her companion got an inkling of this inclination, for she turned and beat a hasty retreat along the narrow passage which led from the bedroom to the body of the house. Olivia did not at once follow her. With a curious reluctance, whether reverence for a dead past whose relics she was disturbing, or fear of some shock which its revelations might bring her, she scarcely knew, the girl picked up one of the dust-begrimed novels, and looked at the title page. But there was nothing written on it. She opened three or four more of the novels with the same result. By this time it was growing so dark that she had to hasten her movements for fear that when at last a clue was found she might be unable to distinguish the letters. Having in vain examined every book upon the table, she continued to explore until she found, on a small hanging bookshelf in an obscure corner of the room, a little pile of devotional works—Bible, hymn book, Bogatsky’s “Golden Treasury,” a tiny “Daily Portion,” and a prayer book. This last was on the top of all. As Olivia opened it, there fell to the floor tiny dried scraps of flowers and fern. Turning to the flyleaf, and carrying the book in haste to the window, she found these words, written in a round, school-boy hand—
“Ellen Mitchell, from her affectionate brother Ned.” And a date of eighteen years back.
Olivia replaced the prayer book on the shelf, and left the old room without further delay, followed by Lucy, who had remained close at hand, but discreetly silent, during these investigations.
When they reached the outer end of the passage, Olivia glanced with some curiosity at the old door she had so roughly broken down, and as she did so, some letters written in pencil high on the upper panel caught her eye. With difficulty she made out a date in July ten years before.
“I wonder,” she thought, “whether that is the date on which the rooms were locked up. If so, it was eight years before the last people left the house, I know. And their name was Mitchell. Who can I ask to tell me the story?”
And, having forgotten cold, fatigue, and hunger in the interest of her discoveries, Olivia Denison made her way slowly down to the ground floor again, where she caught Mrs. Wall in the act of slipping out of the front door.