"It takes a good man to uncover a thing I try to hide. I said nothing to you, Miss Hollister, about the retention within the walls of this house of parts of an old one that formerly occupied the site, for the reason that I thought you might refuse to buy the estate. The gentleman for whom I built Hopefield was superstitious, as many men of advanced years are, as to the building of a new house, and as the site he chose is one of the finest in the county he compelled me to construct this house—which is the most satisfactory I have built—in such manner enough of the old should be kept intact to soothe his superstitious soul with the idea that he had merely altered an old house, not built a new one. As it is the architect's business to yield to such caprices I obeyed him strictly. So there are two rooms of an old farmhouse hidden under the east wing, and it amused me, once I had got into it, to preserve part of the old stairway, and connect the retained chambers with the upper hall of this house. I had to patch the original stair, which was only one flight, with discarded lumber from the old house, but I flatter myself that I managed it neatly. I even saved the old nails to avert the wrath of the evil spirits. When the umbrella and dyspepsia-cure man died,—for he did die, as you know,—I believed the secret had died with him, as he was very sensitive about his superstitions. Most of the laborers on that part of the job were brought from a long distance, and I supposed they never really knew just what we were doing. I might have known, though, that if a fellow as clever as Ames got to pecking at the house the trick would be discovered. But the chimney, old man,—what on earth was the matter with it?"
"It will never happen again, and I promised the ghost never to tell how it was done."
"You were quite right in doing that, Arnold,—a ghost's secrets should be sacred; but let us now proceed to the hidden chambers," said Miss Hollister, rising without further ado.
She summoned Cecilia, to whom we explained matters briefly, and at Pepperton's suggestion the four of us went directly to the fourth floor, so that Miss Octavia might see the whole contrivance in the most effective manner possible.
My awkward pen falters in the attempt to convey any idea of Miss Octavia's delight in Pepperton's revelation; she kept repeating her admiration of his genius, and her praise of my cleverness, which, to protect Hezekiah, I was forced to accept meekly. When in broad daylight Pepperton found and pressed the spring in the upper hall and the hidden door opened, with a slowness that indicated a realization of its own dramatic value, Miss Octavia cried out gleefully, like a child that witnesses the manipulation of a new and wonderful toy.
"To think, Cecilia, that I should never have known of this if that chimney had not smoked!"—a remark that caused Pepperton to glance at me curiously. He knew as well as I did that with ordinary care every flue in that house would have drawn splendidly. "Beyond any question," Miss Octavia kept asserting, "beneath the chambers of the old house down there we shall find the bones of that British soldier who perished here; or it is even possible that a chest of hidden treasure is concealed beneath the floor. What do you yourself suspect, Mr. Pepperton?"
We were lighting candles preparatory to stepping down into the dark stairway, and Pepperton was plainly hard put to keep from laughing.
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that I have told you all I know about the rooms down there. I 'm not very strong in the ghost-faith; and our friend the umbrella-man never dreamed of such a thing, I assure you, not even after he had satisfied his fierce craving for pie."
Miss Octavia followed Pepperton slowly, pausing frequently to hold her candle close to the stair-walls, whose rough surfaces confirmed all that Pepperton had said of the preservation of the old timbers. I had brought a handful of candles, and when we had reached the dark rooms beneath, I lighted these and set them up in the black corners of the old rooms, in which, Miss Octavia remarked, not even the wall paper had been disturbed. The exit into the coal-cellar, and concealed openings left for ventilation which had escaped me before, were now pointed out by the architect, who kept laughing at the huge joke of it all.
Cecilia murmured her surprise repeatedly as we continued the examination; nothing quite like this had ever happened in the world before, but even as we walked through those hidden rooms my thoughts reverted to the crisis so near at hand in her affairs. I had pledged myself to her service, but I saw no way yet of assuring the proper sequence of proposals. The ultimate seventh must be Wiggins; but how could I manage the penultimate sixth! Cecilia's own apparent freedom from care on this tour of inspection deepened my sense of responsibility to all concerned. Dick might by now have persuaded some one of the others at the inn to offer himself, thus closing the gap, and I had determined that the Westerner should not outwit me. It was some consolation to know that while Cecilia was in these lost rooms in my company, she was safe from Dick's machinations.