"You are a bold girl, Lucy. Were you not afraid?" "No, Aunt Deborah. I did not believe anything would hurt me, and I had a great desire to see what the place was like." "And you did not find it at all what you expected. Well, my girl, since you have seen so much, I may as well tell you that those rooms have been used within forty years as a place of concealment for hunted loyalists. Their haunted reputation protects them from any curiosity on the part of the household, and there is a way of access to them from the garden, which I will show you sometime. It is perhaps as well that some one beside myself should be acquainted with the clue, as poor old Roberts cannot live many days. He is the only one who knows anything about the matter, and I may die at any time." "Does not Sir Julius know?" I asked in surprise. "No. The family rule has been that the secret should be told to the eldest child—whether son or daughter, unless the daughter be married. To-night, when the family are in bed, I will shew to you and Amabel the secret passage, but you must promise me, solemnly, never to communicate it, unless to Amabel's eldest child. It may come to be a weighty secret, but since you have unwittingly intruded into it, you must be content to bear your share. There, I am not blaming you. Finding that a door opened into your room, it was but natural that you should wish to see where it led." That night, accordingly, when the rest of the household had gone to bed, Mrs. Deborah came to our room carrying a light in a lanthorn. Instantly I was reminded of the time when Mother Superior took us children into the vault to show us the danger we had escaped. "I will never poke my nose into any more secrets!" I said to myself, for truth to tell, I did not relish the expedition at all. I had been looking at the picture of the ghostly lady in the saloon, and I did not at all fancy meeting that fierce beautiful face at some turn or corner. I had always said to myself that I did not believe in her one bit, but it was one thing to say so in daylight, and another when I was intruding on her den in the night time, by the fitful light of a dark lantern. However, if the lady were displeased, she did not show it. Mrs. Deborah led us through the room into which I had peeped, and into another very much like it. Here she pushed aside a corner press which opened bodily like a door, and shewed a dark entry and a flight of steps, very narrow and rugged, which led down below the level of the ground floor, and then up again at a sharp angle, to a low door in the thickness of the outer wall. This she opened and we found ourselves in a small court not far from the stables. "There is a ghost here too!" said she. "That of a horseman, who walks despairingly up and down, while his horse paws the stones in the corner yonder. Hark, don't you hear him?" I certainly did hear the sound of a horse's hoof, as it seemed, near by. I suppose it was an echo from the stables.