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Lord Braithwaite, to say the truth, appeared a little flabbergasted and disturbed by these latter expressions of the old gentleman. He hesitated, turned pale; but at last, recovering his momentary confusion and irresolution, he replied, with apparent carelessness:--

"Go wherever you will, old gentleman. The house is open to you for this time. If ever you have another opportunity to disturb it, the fault will be mine."

"Follow, sir," said the pensioner, turning to the Warden; "follow, maiden![Endnote: 3] Now shall a great mystery begin to be revealed."

So saying, he led the way before them, passing out of the hall, not by the doorway, but through one of the oaken panels of the wall, which admitted the party into a passage which seemed to pass through the thickness of the wall, and was lighted by interstices through which shone gleams of light. This led them into what looked like a little vestibule, or circular room, which the Warden, though deeming himself many years familiar with the old house, had never seen before, any more than the passage which led to it. To his surprise, this room was not vacant, for in it sat, in a large old chair, Omskirk, like a toad in its hole, like some wild, fearful creature in its den, and it was now partly understood how this man had the possibility of suddenly disappearing, so inscrutably, and so in a moment; and, when all quest for him was given up, of as suddenly appearing again.

"Ha!" said old Omskirk, slowly rising, as at the approach of some event that he had long expected. "Is he coming at last?"

"Poor victim of another's iniquity," said the pensioner. "Thy release approaches. Rejoice!"

The old man arose with a sort of trepidation and solemn joy intermixed in his manner, and bowed reverently, as if there were in what he heard more than other ears could understand in it.

"Yes; I have waited long," replied he. "Welcome; if my release is come."

"Well," said Lord Braithwaite, scornfully. "This secret retreat of my house is known to many. It was the priest's secret chamber when it was dangerous to be of the old and true religion, here in England. There is no longer any use in concealing this place; and the Warden, or any man, might have seen it, or any of the curiosities of the old hereditary house, if desirous so to do."

"Aha! son of Belial!" quoth the pensioner. "And this, too!"

He took three pieces from a certain point of the wall, which he seemed to know, and stooped to press upon the floor. The Warden looked at Lord Braithwaite, and saw that he had grown deadly pale. What his change of cheer might bode, he could not guess; but, at the pressure of the old pensioner's finger, the floor, or a segment of it, rose like the lid of a box, and discovered a small darksome pair of stairs, within which burned a lamp, lighting it downward, like the steps that descend into a sepulchre.

"Follow," said he, to those who looked on, wondering.

And he began to descend. Lord Braithwaite saw him disappear, then frantically followed, the Warden next, and old Omskirk took his place in the rear, like a man following his inevitable destiny. At the bottom of a winding descent, that seemed deep and remote, and far within, they came to a door, which the pensioner pressed with a spring; and, passing through the space that disclosed itself, the whole party followed, and found themselves in a small, gloomy room. On one side of it was a couch, on which sat Redclyffe; face to face with him was a white-haired figure in a chair.

"You are come!" said Redclyffe, solemnly. "But too late!"

"And yonder is the coffer," said the pensioner. "Open but that; and our quest is ended."

"That, if I mistake not, I can do," said Redclyffe.

He drew forth--what he had kept all this time, as something that might yet reveal to him the mystery of his birth--the silver key that had been found by the grave in far New England; and applying it to the lock, he slowly turned it on the hinges, that had not been turned for two hundred years. All--even Lord Braithwaite, guilty and shame- stricken as he felt--pressed forward to look upon what was about to be disclosed. What were the wondrous contents? The entire, mysterious coffer was full of golden ringlets, abundant, clustering through the whole coffer, and living with elasticity, so as immediately, as it were, to flow over the sides of the coffer, and rise in large abundance from the long compression. Into this--by a miracle of natural production which was known likewise in other cases--into this had been resolved the whole bodily substance of that fair and unfortunate being, known so long in the legends of the family as the Beauty of the Golden Locks. As the pensioner looked at this strange sight,--the lustre of the precious and miraculous hair gleaming and glistening, and seeming to add light to the gloomy room,--he took from his breast pocket another lock of hair, in a locket, and compared it, before their faces, with that which brimmed over from the coffer.