some lighter fare among them. I examined also a few of the old account books, in the same hope. Other rubbish lay scattered in the corners of the room; old mouse-eaten saddle-bags mostly. There were one or two empty baskets, which had once been lined with silk. In one of them, I can't think why, there was an old empty, dusty powder-horn, the only thing in that room at all to my taste. I stuck it into my belt with a scrap of spunyarn, feeling that it made me a wonderful piratical figure. If I had had a lantern I should have been a very king there. As I sat among the rubbish there, with my pistol (a sailmaker's fid) in my belt, it occurred to me that I would sit up till everyone had gone to bed. Then, at eleven or twelve o'clock, I would, I thought, creep downstairs, to explore all over the house, down even to the cellars. It shocked me when I remembered that I was locked in. I dared not pick the lock of that door. My scheme (after all) would have to wait for another night, when the difficulties would be less. That scheme of mine has waited until the present time. Though I never thought it, that was the last hour I was to spend in my uncle's house. I walked past it, only the other day, thinking how strange my life has been, feeling sad, too, that I should never know to what room a door at the end of the upper passage led. Well, I never shall know, now. I was a wild, disobedient young rogue. Read on. When I decided not to pick the lock of my door I thought of the mysterious Mr. Jermyn as an alternative excitement. I crept to my window to look out at the house, watching it with a sort of terrified pleasure, half expecting to see a ghost flapping his wings, outside the window.