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Left alone, Mr. Gillies's first movement was to fasten the door, his next
to open every one of the sliding panels and narrowly examine the recess
within, to make sure that none of them covered a hidden entrance to the room.
Then he seated himself in the reading chair occupying the bay window and
looked out. It was like looking from the windows of a ship in mid ocean, for,
owing to the peculiar construction of the opening, no sign of land was visible
from it; only a world of waters stretching wide and blue to the horizon, with
the pale gold of a winter sun flecking their surface and glittering on their whitemaned
crests.

John Gillies looked long and earnestly, then sadly shook his head.

“I doubt if I ever like it,” muttered he, and turned the chair with its back
to the window. Then, in a reluctant fashion, as one who approaches an imperative
but repulsive duty, he drew a note case from his pocket and selected from
its contents a paper carefully folded, and docketed

Spreading this upon the table before him, Mr. Gillies slowly read—but not
aloud, for, to have afforded gratuitous information upon his affairs even to the
walls and the sea, would have been to do violence to his nature—these words:

You will probably be much surprised, Mr. John Gillies, at finding yourself appointed
my heir, and the explanation I am about to give of my choice, will leave you as bewildered
as before; nevertheless, it would defeat my own purpose were I to be more explicit.

Several years ago, when I returned from Europe and took possession of my meagre
patrimony of Cragness, I found my brother Egbert comfortably established at his seat of
Bonniemeer, and happy in his family and position. The fraternal friendship that sprung
up between us was pleasanter than I can say, to me, a man without ties of family or affection
other than those binding me to him and his. I made a home of his house, and resolved
in my own mind to bequeath my small property to one of his children.

This state of things endured for years, and then in one day these relations and this
determination were destroyed. I withdrew to Cragness, and have lived there until now,
a lonely and unhappy man. My motive in thus destroying the happiness of my own life
has remained up to this moment a mystery to all connected with it. My brother, in trying
to solve it, met with so decided a repulse that he left me in displeasure, and, with the

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implacable spirit of our race, never allowed himself, from that day to the day of his death,
to again approach the subject or to exhibit any desire for a renewal of the brotherly intimacy
whose loss was nearly as severe to him as to me.

To you, John Gillies, I give the explanation I refused to my nearest friend. I had
discovered a secret relating to our family affairs whose announcement would have ruined
at a blow all that fair structure whose corner-stones were my brother's honor, his wife's
peace, their children's future. Should I have been the one to bring desolation to the
home that had opened to me with such welcome and such promise? And yet might I
keep this thing to myself and feel that the traditional honor of the Vaughns had suffered
no taint?

For years I have vainly sought in my own heart for an answer to these questions, and
yet they remain unsolved. While I have waited, Time has moved steadily on. My
brother is dead, his wife is dead, of all the pretty children who used to group about my
knee only two remain, but those two stand in their father's place, and to them I still owe
the duty I owed to him.

I feel that my own departure draws nigh, and the question that was too mighty for the
vigor of manhood is not to be solved by the feeble and timorous mind of age. I dare
not carry the secret I have discovered to that other world where I may meet those who
will demand account of it; I dare not speak it out and bring dishonor and perplexity to
my brother's house. I have decided to commit it to Destiny, and I choose you as the
agent of Destiny. Why you, why exactly you and no other man, are the man I choose as
this agent, is another secret belonging only to myself and to you, and its solution is
bound up with that of the great and principal one which has tortured me to my death,
and which I now bequeath to you couched in a cipher peculiar to my own family and unknown
beyond it:

In the interpretation of these three words, you have the clue to a mystery so portentous
that it has crushed my life beneath its weight, and now haunts my death-bed with a
terrible doubt of my own guiltlessness in so long withholding it.

And yet I cannot speak it out; I cannot. Take it as I give it you, John Gillies, and
with it take the consciousness that, folded in this mystery, you hold the peace, the honor,
the comfort, the very life and name of a proud and ancient family. Remember that you,
of all men, are the one best fitted for this responsibility, and it was only when I decided
to find and confide in you that even death seemed a possible end to my entanglement;
for, as I before said, I should never have dared to carry it to meet those who wait for me
beyond the dark river.

You will not refuse me, you dare not, for it is from the grave I speak to you, and
charge it upon you as a living man to obey the voice of the dead. Accept my bequest,
accept my secret, and both under these conditions:

You are to make Cragness your home, spending the most of your time there, and
using the library as your usual sitting-room.

You are to make the most faithful endeavor to compass the secret partially confided
to you, and, if discovered, you are to use it in the manner which honestly seems best to
your own mind, or at your option to destroy all evidence of it, and allow matters to remain
as destiny has arranged them.

You are upon no account to confide any particular of these arrangements to any member
of the Vaughn family, although you are allowed to use your own judgment in selecting
an adviser outside of that circle; your natural reticence of disposition being guarantee
that this permission will not be abused.

If you wish for such help as is to be found in a history of my family, you may obtain
it from either member of the firm of Jones, Brown & Robinson, our solicitors for many
years.

As to your testamentary disposition of the property bequeathed by me to you, I say
nothing more than that I shall expect it to be guided by the result of your researches.

And now I leave the matter to Destiny and to you. If the infirm purpose and

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vacillating will which have been my bane through life have misled me at the last, may God
pardon me and inspire my successor with more wisdom.

“In this room,” muttered Gillies, finishing and folding the letter. Then he
rose and surveyed the room as an athlete measures the foe with whom he is
about to grapple in deadly conflict. A room of mysteries, he felt. A room
whose every object looked at him with wary eyes and close-shut mouth, as who
should say, “I have the secret, and I shall keep it.” A look answering line for
line to the stubborn determination of his own face, and, indeed, as room and
man stood confronted, an observer could not fail to perceive one of those subtle
likenesses by no means unusual between men and things, resulting now in attraction,
now in repulsion. In the present instance, the relation threatened to
become antagonistic, for the stubborn and reticent man demanding the secret
which the equally stubborn and reticent room refused to yield, would inevitably
come to hate the thing that too successfully resisted him, and a room so personal
as this library of Cragness would be at no loss for means to make itself
odious to the man who defied it.

Some vague perception of this strange relation between himself and the
place must have stirred in John Gillies's own mind, when, with clenched hand
and frowning brow he turned his cold eyes once more to every side, and muttered,

“I'll have it yet!”

A sudden chill seemed to fall at the words from roof and walls, and in at the
broad sea-window. An involuntary shiver ran through the flesh and blood
which it assailed; but the man's will neither shook or faltered.

Striding to the fire-place, he threw another fragment of the old wreck upon
the embers, and then standing upon the hearth, his back to the room, applied
himself to seriously consider the heraldic achievement before him, an object to
which he had hitherto paid but small attention. The shield was a proud one.
Upon an azure field it bore a knight in golden armor, his lance couched for the
the onset, his left hand guiding his sable war-horse. The crest was an argent
passion-cross, upborne by angels' wings. The motto enwrought in golden letters
upon a fanciful scroll was—

Dieu, le roy, et le foy du Vaughn.

This device John Gillies examined in detail, with the same grave attention
which he bestowed upon everything; but even here found cause of discontent.

“The knight has his face covered, and the motto is in a foreign language,”
said he, and taking a book from the mantel-shelf he resolutely began at the titlepage
and read until the gathering dusk warned him that night was approaching.

Then, suffering the book to fall to the floor at his feet, and, leaning back in
the old chair, he allowed his mind for the first time to turn upon the strange
circumstances surrounding him.

The sound of footsteps and a feeble knock at the door aroused him, and
opening he found old Lazarus upon the threshold, with a broad-shouldered,
awkward fellow behind him.

“There, I told you there was no one here but Mr. Reginald,” said Lazarus,
peevishly.

“That ain't Mr. Reginald, you old simpleton—it's Mr. Gillies, the very man
I was asking for,” retorted the stranger in a loud whisper; and then, stepping

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forward, he said, with the mixture of awkwardness and conscious independence
peculiar to the American rustic and to no other class of men beneath the sun:

“My name's Brume. I live down to Carrick, and see you last night when
you came in the stage. Jim Powers, that stops to Frederic Vaughn's, was down
to the tavern awhile ago, and said you wanted your things fetched up, and would
like a man to stop awhile, and sort of help along a little. So I thought, as I'd
nothing particular to do just now, and it's sort of tedious sitting round all day,
I'd fetch up the things, and, if we suited each other, I might stop.”

“As a servant?” enquired Gillies, calmly.

“O waal, cap'n, we don't need to call no names about it. I know how to
take hold of most anything; been to sea for cook and steward, and are what
they call a jack-of-all-trades. I'll do pretty nigh as you'd like to have me; but
I can't begin, going on forty, to call any man master, or myself servant.”

“So long as you perform service you are a servant,” said Mr. Gillies, positively;
“but the name under which you perform it makes no difference to me;
if it does to you, choose what suits you best. I will make enquiries about you
in Carrick, and if the answers are satisfactory I will engage you, at such wages
as we may decide upon. Do you wish to stay on these conditions?”

“Well, yes, cap'n; I expect I might as well,” said Reuben, rather doubtfully:

“I shall require very little of any one,” added Mr. Gillies, “and shall choose
to see as little as possible of any one. This old man is to stay, and be treated
with consideration.”

“Old Lahs'rus! Oh, sartin. He's one of the old stand-bys, and I shouldn't
never think of setting up agin him,” said Mr. Brume, with an approving slap
upon the shoulder of the old man, who, with one withered finger at his lips, was
staring uneasily from one speaker to the other, and again past them both into
the library, whence he seemed to expect the momentary appearance of one who
should, assuming his rightful place in the house, drive out these vexatious intruders
and reëstablish the old order of things.

“At present,” said Mr. Gillies, coldly, “I should like some dinner. You
may see, if you please, if anything is to be found in the house.”

“There, now,” said Reuben, with a sudden illumination of countenance, “I
guessed right for once, I'll bet a cent. Jim told me how matters wos up here,
and that he didn't b'lieve Lahs'rus would make out anything of a dinner for you.
So I told Burroughs he might put up a basket of vittles, and I'd fetch 'em along.
Even if you'd got something, I thought they might work in handy; for I'm
pretty hearty to eat, myself, and if you wasn't a mind to take 'em, why I told him
I'd pay for 'em out of my own pocket. I reckon 'twouldn't break me, though I
don't pretend to be a Creshus.”

“You did very well, although ordinarily I do not wish any one to make purchases
for me without orders,” said Mr. Gillies. “I will eat here. Bring in
what you have prepared, and then see about my bed and your own.”

“All right, cap'n. I reck'n we'll keep her before the wind, though we be
rather light-handed,” said Reuben, cheerily; and, taking possession of old Lazarus,
he withdrew, closing the door behind him, while his new master, returning
to the fire-place, stirred the brands until a river of sparks flowed up the broad
chimney, and great billows of light surged into every corner of the dark room,
and flashed from the oriel-window out upon the waters, so that the bewildered
mariners thought to have discovered a new Pharos upon the dangerous coast.

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