“How am I to get it when I don’t know what it is nor where it is,” Magdalen said to her one night when she sat watching by her, and Hester had insisted that she should go to the garret, and “head off that woman. She’s there, and by and by she’ll find that loose board in the floor under the rafters where I bumped my head so hard. Go, Magdalen, for Heaven’s sake, if you care for _Roger_.” Magdalen’s face was very white now, and her eyes like burning coals as she questioned Hester. At the mention of Roger a sudden suspicion had flashed upon her, making her grow faint and cold as she grasped the high post of the bedstead and asked, “How she could get it when she did not know what it was, nor where it was.” The sound of her voice roused the old woman a little, but she soon relapsed into her dreamy, talkative mood, and insisted that Mrs. Walter Scott was in the garret and Magdalen must “head her off.” “I’ll go,” Magdalen said at last, taking the candle which Hester always used for going about the house. “Hush!” she continued, as Hester began to grow very restless; “I’m going to the garret. Be quiet till I come back.” “I will, yes,” was Hester’s reply, her eyes wide open now, and staring wildly at Magdalen, whose dress she tried to clutch with her hand as she whispered, “The loose board, way down under the eaves. You must get on your knees. Bring it to me, and never tell.” The house was very quiet, for the family had long since retired, and the pale spring moonlight came struggling through the windows, and lighting up the halls through which Magdalen went on her strange errand to the garret. The stairs which led to it were away from the main portion of the building, and she felt a thrill of something like fear as she passed into the dark, narrow hall, and paused a moment by the door of the stairway. What should she find,—was Mrs. Walter Scott there, as Hester had averred; and if so, what was she doing, and what excuse could Magdalen make for being there herself? “I’ll wait, and let matters take their course,” she thought; and then summoning all her courage, she opened the door, and began the ascent of the steep narrow way, every stair of which creaked with her tread, for Magdalen did not try to be cautious. “If any one is there, they shall know I am coming,” she thought; and she held her candle high above her head, so that its light might shine to the farthest crevice of the garret and give warning of her approach.