Then she woke suddenly, bathed in perspiration, and with a feeling that she had really been to the attic and found the key. She did not try to sleep again and rose early, with a nervous headache, a sense of depression unusual to her and a sensation of trying to recall something which came almost within the grasp of her memory and then eluded it. Her dream was still so vivid that she half resolved on going to the attic to see if the key was really hanging behind the chest. By this time there was a good deal of stir in the house. Servants were moving about. She might be seen and her actions wondered at. She would wait developments, but her nervousness increased and her face grew whiter when at breakfast she heard plans for opening the chest.
“Let’s go and have a look at the old thing. I don’t suppose the party across the road under the sod will care, do you?” Charley Reeves said when breakfast was over, and with Alex. at their head some of the guests were soon climbing the narrow stairs to the attic. “Jolly, what a big room this is! I wonder you don’t have it finished up for a dancing hall,” Charley said.
“What would I do with the trunk?” Alex. asked.
“Sell it at auction. Every article would bring a thundering price if you labelled it a century old, as it must be,” Charley replied, sitting down in a carved chair, the back of which gave way and sent him to the floor amid the jeers of his companions.
Picking himself up, he went with the others to the chest, where Alex. was standing with a puzzled look on his face. When he saw it the day before he was sure it was close against the wall and a little under the rafters, where it would be out of the way. Now one end of it was moved five or six inches. Somebody must have been there, and who? Not one of his guests, surely, and if some one else had a curiosity with regard to its contents, it was time he opened it and saw for himself what it contained. A thought of the pretty girl who had visited the Pledgers had haunted him continually since Charley had spoken of her, and he could not shake off a feeling that if she were a Crosby or a remote connection, she had a better right to the chest than himself and the gay crowd clamoring to have it opened.
“I guess I’ll have to do it,” he thought, taking hold of one end and finding it heavier than he had anticipated.
“Where’s the key?” Charley asked, and Alex. replied:
“Lost or stolen. I must go for something to pry off the padlock.”
Sherry’s room was in the hall from which the stairs led to the attic and only three doors from it. She had gone up to bathe her throbbing head, and as her door was open she heard what Alex. said.
“I have half a mind to tell him to look behind the chest. I believe the key is there, my dream was so vivid,” she thought, and stepped into the hall just as Alex. came down the stairs.