Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there must be peril; here, too, fate was working. The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open. From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys, nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with tremulous hand. 'Steadman is uncommonly clever--thinks he knows everything--but he doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys--too big, too big--but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are drawers enough for that.' Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him--it must needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it. This was the Maulevrier skeleton. 'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom. She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side. The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber, oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in the shape of trunks, portmanteaux--all very old and dusty--and two large wooden cases, banded with iron. Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold, and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest. Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box where it was, and raised the lid. 'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy--this is my little girl's legacy.' Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless with wonder.