The next morning was rainy, precluding any outdoor amusements, but just the time for an inspection of old Mrs. Crosby’s wardrobe, some of the young people said, as they gathered at the breakfast table. Sherry, who was at her post, was feeling wretchedly, and could scarcely keep on her feet. The night before, when no one saw her, she had gone to the attic and looked at the chest and tried to move it from the wall, thinking she might find the key, if it was still where Mrs. Pledger had said it was kept years ago. But it was heavy, and she had returned to her room with a feeling that she ought to prevent its contents from being desecrated by stranger hands. Her great-grandmother’s bridal dress was probably there, and Sherry tried to fancy her as she must have looked on that night of the great Crosby party. It was a long time before she could sleep, she was so excited about the chest and what she had heard of the Pledgers, and what Charley Reeves had said of the “deuced pretty girl” who had visited the “old crow’s nest,” where the maid “hollered up the stairs.” She was the girl, no doubt, but the compliment paid her was lost in the sting of the maid and the “crow’s nest,” and she tossed from side to side until at last she fell asleep and dreamed that her grandmother came to her clad in heavy brocade silk, with jewels in her ears and knots of old point lace on her sleeves and at her bosom and on the shoulders, and on her head a white bonnet with pink bows and wide ribbon strings. “Come,” she had said, beckoning to Sherry, who went with her to the attic, where together they drew the chest a little from the wall, and her grandmother showed her the key to the padlock hanging on a tack which had been driven into the wood, just as Mrs. Pledger had said it was. Then she woke suddenly, bathed in perspiration, and with a feeling that she had really been to the attic and found the key. She did not try to sleep again and rose early, with a nervous headache, a sense of depression unusual to her and a sensation of trying to recall something which came almost within the grasp of her memory and then eluded it. Her dream was still so vivid that she half resolved on going to the attic to see if the key was really hanging behind the chest. By this time there was a good deal of stir in the house. Servants were moving about. She might be seen and her actions wondered at. She would wait developments, but her nervousness increased and her face grew whiter when at breakfast she heard plans for opening the chest. “Let’s go and have a look at the old thing. I don’t suppose the party across the road under the sod will care, do you?” Charley Reeves said when breakfast was over, and with Alex. at their head some of the guests were soon climbing the narrow stairs to the attic. “Jolly, what a big room this is! I wonder you don’t have it finished up for a dancing hall,” Charley said. “What would I do with the trunk?” Alex. asked.