Saxe Holm's Stories / First Series

by Helen Hunt Jackson

My hands trembled with excitement as I dressed. Yet I was not afraid: I knew it was in some way connected with "Esther," though my uncle had not mentioned her name.

I found him sitting before the library table, which was literally covered with old letters, such as we had before seen.

"O uncle!" I gasped as soon as I saw them.

"Yes, dear! I have got them all. There was no ghost!"

Then he told me in few words what had happened. It seemed that he had gone down himself into the cellar, partly to satisfy himself that all was right with the furnace, partly with a vague hope of finding another of the letters. He had found nothing, had examined the furnace, locked the door at the head of the cellar stairs, and gone up to his bed-room. While he was undressing, a strange impulse seized him to go back once more, and see whether it might not happen to him as it had to Robert, to find a letter on returning after a few moments' interval.

He threw on his wrapper, took a candle, and went down. The first thing he saw, on opening the door, which he had himself locked only five minutes before, was a letter lying on the same fourth stair!

"I confess, Nell," said he, "for a minute I felt as frightened as black Bob. But I sat down on the upper step, and resolved not to go away till I had discovered how that letter came there, if I stayed till day-light!"

Nearly an hour passed, he said; the cold wind from the cellar blew up and swayed the candle-flame to and fro. All sorts of strange sounds seemed to grow louder and louder, and still he sat, gazing helplessly in a sort of despair at that motionless letter, which he had not lifted from the stair. At last, purely by accident, he looked up to the staircase overhead--the front stairs, down which he had just come from his room. He jumped to his feet! There, up among the dark cobwebbed shadows, he thought he saw something white. He held up the candle. It was, yes, it was a tiny corner of white paper wedged into a crack; by standing on the beam at the side he could just reach it. He touched it,--pulled it;--it came out slowly,--another of Esther's letters. They were hid in the upper staircase! The boards had been worn and jarred a little away from each other, and the letters were gradually shaken through the opening; some heavier or quicker step than usual giving always the final impetus to a letter which had been for days slowly working down towards the fated outlet.

Stealthily as any burglar he had crept about his own house, had taken up the whole of the front staircase carpet, and had with trouble pried off one board of the stair in which the letters were hid. There had been a spring, he found, but it was rusted and would not yield. He had carefully replaced the carpet, carried the letters into the library, and come for me; it was now half-past one o'clock at night.

Dear, blessed Uncle Jo! I am an old woman now. Good men and strong men have given me love, and have shown me of their love for others; but never did I feel myself so in the living presence of incarnate love as I did that night, sitting with my white-haired uncle, face to face with the faded records of the love of Esther Wynn.