Here the bottom of the second sheet was reached, and here Marion, who was devouring the MS. with its crooked and sprawling handwriting, in the same state of feverish excitement as the librarian had suffered, was forced to a standstill. “And the rest is in his pocket,” she said to herself, with fiery impatience. “The most interesting part, too, the plan he had conceived for the finding of this treasure! I must go and find Amos Goodhare; I must force him to give it to me.” But she was spared that trouble. Springing to her feet, for she had sat down upon a pile of lumber to consider the dazzling prospect which the letter opened to her girlish imagination, she found herself face to face with the librarian himself. The sun had gone down low in the sky while she was occupied in making out slowly, letter by letter, the old-fashioned spelling and scrawling handwriting. Now there came, through the corner of the window, the last red rays of the sunset. They fell on the face of the librarian, gave a lurid light to his grey eyes, and a diabolical cast to his complexion; so that Lady Marion, seeing him thus unexpectedly, belied her assumption of strength of mind by uttering a shrill cry. Perhaps it was the heat into which the letter had thrown her imagination; perhaps it was only the effect of the shadows thrown by the ivy outside; but it seemed to the girl that his features were distorted by passion so violent as to render him for the time scarcely human; she actually cowered as she stood, afraid that he would strike her, or that his very look would work upon her some mischief. She went through a moment of horror which she never mentioned, yet never forgot, in which the tall, spare man, with his flashing eyes and threatening attitude, the brown rafters overhead, the great piles of lumber on either side, and the thick, choking dust over all, were stamped upon her mind in a weird and vivid picture. The next moment, as if in a dissolving view, the picture had faded away, and Amos Goodhare, the grave and courteous librarian, stood before her with his head bent and his usual stoop, in a most respectful attitude. “I have found some papers here to-day, Lady Marion, which I believe will interest you greatly,” said he in his bland, measured voice. But Lady Marion had received a shock from which she could not in a moment recover. “I--I--thank you. You can show me presently,” she said, with dry mouth and unsteady voice. “Can you not stay one moment, just to see one part of a letter which--ah, you have it in your hand. Have you read it? I am afraid the handwriting is not very easy to make out. Will you let me----” “Thank you, I--I made it out,” said the girl, not yet mistress of herself.