“I must be firm,” she muttered as she glanced round the empty hall, shuddering as she recalled the scene on that night, and seeming to see once more the crowd—the fire—her husband struggling for his life.
“I will not think,” she cried, stamping her foot, and placing her hands to her eyes, as if to shut out the terrible recollections; and an echo ran through the place, and seemed to go from room to room and die away in the great attic where Julia used to play.
No; she had not come to stand face to face with the ghosts of past memories: she had driven them away. She did not go into the old panelled dining-room, where she had watched for such long hours for her husband’s return, neither did she turn the handle to enter the melancholy cobweb-hung drawing-room, or note that the papers in the chambers were soiled and faded and different, and that the damp made some hang in festoons from the corners, and other pieces fold right over and peel down from the wall.
No; she paused for none of these, but, as if moved by some strong impulse, ran right up to the top of the house, and stood in the great attic lumber-room, brightly lit by a skylight, and a dormer at the farther end.
Then, with her heart beating quickly, she took from her bosom the portion she had cut from Hallam’s letter, and read it in a low, hoarse voice.
“Go to Castor if you have left there, and get possession of the old house for a day if it is empty. If not, you must get there by some excuse that your woman’s wit may find. As a last resource, take it, and buy the tenant out at any cost, but get there. Go alone, and take with you a hammer and screw-driver. Shut yourself up securely in the place, and then go upstairs to the attic where we kept the old lumber. There, on the right-hand side of the fireplace, in the built-up wall, just one foot from the floor, and right in the centre, drive in the screw-driver with the hammer, and chip away the plaster. Do not fail. You will find there a little recess carefully plastered, and papered over. In that recess is a small locked tin box. Take it out, and bring it to me unopened. That box contains papers of vital importance to me, for they will set me free.
“Read above again. Strike in the screw-driver boldly, for the box is there, and I charge you, my wife, to bring it safely and untouched to me.
“Once more, this must be secretly done. No one must know but you. If it were known, I might not succeed in getting my liberty.”
Millicent Hallam thrust the paper back in her bosom and stood there in that unoccupied room with a strange buzzing in her ears, and films floating before her eyes.
“I am choking,” she gasped; “water—air.”
She reeled, and seemed about to fall, but by a supreme effort she forced her tottering way to the dormer window, opened it, and the fresh air recovered her.
“Oh, for strength—strength!” she gasped as she clung to the sill. “It is for his freedom—to save him I am come.”