Said Cosmo, who had been gazing toward the closet from where he stood by the bedside,
“It seems to gang farther back nor the thickness o’ the wa’!” He went and looked out of the western window, then turned again towards the closet. “I canna think,” he resumed, with something like annoyance in his tone, “hoo it cud be ’at I never noticed that afore! A body wad think I had nae heid for what I prided mysel’ upo’—an un’erstan’in’ o’ hoo things are putten thegither, specially i’ the w’y o’ stane an’ lime! The closet rins richt intil the great blin’ wa’ atween the twa hooses! I thoucht that wa’ had been naething but a kin’ o’ a curtain o’ defence, but there may weel be a passage i’ the thickness o’ ’t!”
So saying he re-entered the closet, and proceeded to move the bureau. The task was not an easy one. The bureau was large, and so nearly filled the breadth of the closet, that he could attack it nowhere but in front, and had to drag it forward, laying hold of it where he could, over a much-worn oak floor. The sun had long deserted him before he got behind it.
“I wad sair like to brak throu’ the buirds, father?” he said, going again to the laird.
“Onything ye like, I tell ye, laddie! I’m growin’ curious mysel’,” he answered.
“I’m feart for makin’ ower muckle din, father.”
“Nae fear, nae fear! I haena a sair heid. The Lord be praist, that’s a thing I’m seldom triblet wi’. Gang an’ get ye what tools ye want, an’ gang at it, an’ dinna spare. Gien the hole sud lat in the win’, ye’ll mar nae mair, I’m thinkin’, nor ye’ll be able to mak again. What timmer is ’t o’?”
“Only deal, sae far as I can judge.”
Cosmo went and fetched his tool-basket, and set to work. The partition was strong, of good sound pine, neither rotten nor worm-eaten—inch-boards matched with groove and tongue, not quite easy to break through. But having, with a centre-bit and brace, bored several holes near each other, he knocked out the pieces between, and introducing a saw, soon made an opening large enough to creep through. A cold air met him, as if from a cellar, and on the other side he seemed in another climate.
Feeling with his hands, for there was scarcely any light, he discovered that the space he had entered was not a closet, inasmuch as there was no shelf, or anything in it, whatever. It was certainly most like the end of a deserted passage. His feet told him the floor was of wood, and his hands that the walls were of rough stone without plaster, cold and damp. With outstretched arms he could easily touch both at once. Advancing thus a few paces, he struck his head against wood, felt panels, and concluded a door. There was a lock, but the handle was gone. He went back a little, and threw himself against it. Lock and hinges too gave way, and it fell right out before him. He went staggering on, and was brought up by a bed, half-falling across it. He was in the spare room, the gruesome centre of legend, the dwelling of ghostly awe. Not yet apparently had its numen forsaken it, for through him passed a thrill at the discovery. From his father’s familiar room to this, was like some marvellous transition in a fairy-tale; the one was home, a place of use and daily custom; the other a hollow in the far-away past, an ancient cave of Time, full of withering history. Its windows being all to the north and long unopened, it was lustreless, dark, and musty with decay.