Donal waited, and said not a word.
“I min’ this much,” she said at length, “—that they used to be thegither i’ that room. I min’ too that there was something aboot buildin’ up ae wa’, an’ pullin’ doon anither.—It’s comin’—it’s comin’ back to me!”
She paused again awhile, and then said:
“All I can recollec’, Mr. Grant, is this: that efter her deith, he biggit up something no far frae that room!—what was ’t noo?—an’ there was something aboot makin’ o’ the room bigger! Hoo that could be by buildin’ up, I canna think! Yet I feel sure that was what he did!”
“Would you mind coming to the place?” said Donal. “To see it might help you to remember.”
“I wull, sir. Come ye here aboot half efter ten, an’ we s’ gang thegither.”
As soon as the house was quiet, they went. But Mistress Brookes could recall nothing, and Donal gazed about him to no purpose.
“What’s that?” he said at last, pointing to the wall on the other side of which was the little chamber.
Two arches, in chalk, as it seemed, had attracted his gaze. Light surely was about to draw nigh through the darkness! Chaos surely was settling a little towards order!
The one arch was drawn opposite the hidden chamber; the other against the earl’s closet, as it had come to be called in the house—most of the domestics thinking he there said his prayers. It looked as if there had been an intention of piercing the wall with such arches, to throw the two small rooms on the other side as recesses into the larger. But if that had been the intent, what could the building of a wall, vaguely recollected by mistress Brookes, have been for? That a wall had been built he did not doubt, for he believed he knew the wall, but why?