My father had placed an iron chest in a secure niche in the dining-room,
behind the great central mirror, made for the purpose of concealing it,
and to which he alone had access. Here he had kept a store of plate,
money, jewels, and papers, so as to defy all burglarious interference or
foreign scrutiny, and, in dying, had bequeathed the secret of the patent
lock to Mr. Bainrothe alone. Old Morton even was ignorant of the
contrivance.
I knew of the niche and the iron chest by the merest accident, and had
been requested, nay, commanded, by my father, not to speak of either;
so, in silence the mystery had almost died out of my recollection, when
it was rather singularly revived again in this wise:
During one of the hottest nights early in September, after our return
from Saratoga, I descended, parched with thirst, to the dining-room,
about four o'clock in the morning, to seek a glass of iced-water,
always to be found there, I knew, by night or day, on the sideboard, in
a small silver cistern.
The dawn was dimly breaking through the great window in the hall as I
passed down the broad stairway, still in my night-dress and unslippered
feet; but, on approaching the dining-room, I was surprised to see the
gleam of a candle falling athwart the mirror, which had been swung from
its place (as I had seen it once before swung by my father), so as to
screen my advancing form from the person evidently at work behind it.
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