Blanche (mysteriously).--"I have found a new room, Sisty. Do you think we may look into it?" Pisistratus--"Certainly; unless any Bluebeard of your acquaintance told you not. Where is it?" Blanche.--"Upstairs, to the left." Pisistratus.--"That little old door, going down two stone steps, which is always kept locked?" Blanche.--"Yes; it is not locked to-day. The door was ajar, and I peeped in; but I would not do more till I came and asked you if you thought it would not be wrong." Pisistratus.--"Very good in you, my discreet little cousin. I have no doubt it is a ghost-trap; however, with Juba's protection, I think we might venture together." Pisistratus, Blanche, and Juba ascend the stairs, and turn off down a dark passage to the left, away from the rooms in use. We reach the arch-pointed door of oak planks nailed roughly together, we push it open, and perceive that a small stair winds down from the room,--it is just over Roland's chamber. The room has a damp smell, and has probably been left open to be aired; for the wind comes through the unbarred casement, and a billet barns on the Hearth. The place has that attractive, fascinating air which belongs to a lumber-room,--than which I know nothing that so captivates the interest and fancy of young people. What treasures, to them, often lie hid in those quaint odds and ends which the elder generations have discarded as rubbish! All children are by nature antiquarians and relic-hunters. Still, there is an order and precision with which the articles in that room are stowed away that belies the true notion of lumber,--none of the mildew and dust which give such mournful interest to things abandoned to decay. In one corner are piled up cases and military-looking trunks of outlandish aspect, with R. D. C. in brass nails on their sides. From these we turn with involuntary respect and call off Juba, who has wedged himself behind in pursuit of some imaginary mouse. But in the other corner is what seems to me a child's cradle,--not an English one, evidently; it is of wood, seemingly Spanish rosewood, with a railwork at the back, of twisted columns; and I should scarcely have known it to be a cradle but for the fairy-like quilt and the tiny pillows, which proclaimed its uses.