They passed in and out of Hannah’s room, Lucinda Fife asking each new-comer to ‘just step in and look at Hannah!’ Borne along by their sympathy and curiosity, Rita and Nan went in and looked on poor Hannah, stiff and uncompromising as of old, lying in her unwonted bed. She eyed them with her impenetrable gray gaze, and it was evident that the mystery of the Little Room would never be revealed by her, even if one could be bold enough to storm that granite citadel. They talked with Maria. She heard the messages from her niece in gentle silence. Rita took her passive hand and tried to tell her how they sympathized with her in her troubles, and to explain how it was they had happened to come at this time, but it evidently did not get below the surface of Maria’s consciousness. She seemed most taken with Nan, however, and to like to have her near her. Just before they left her, Rita ventured to ask if any of their gilt-edged china was saved. ‘No, I guess not,’ said Maria. ‘Did they save the blue-chintz sofa?’ impetuously asked Nan. ‘No, I didn’t hear as they did.’ ‘You _did_ have a gilt-edged china set, didn’t you?’ said Nan. ‘And a blue sofa?’ persuaded Rita. ‘I don’t seem to remember anything much,’ said Maria, with an appealing glance towards the room where Hannah lay. It would be barbarity to press her further just then. Rita and Nan went away--not to the Adirondacks, however, but to spend a few days with Jane Peebles, who gladly acceded to their petition to be boarded there for a time. ‘Miss Peebles, where is that man Hiram who always lived at the Keys’?’ asked Rita, as Jane helped them to apple-sauce and ginger-bread at supper. ‘Hiram? I guess he’s pretty well tuckered out, what with the fire and Hannah’s stroke; he come over here this mornin’ and wanted a piece of my huckleberry pie; he said he couldn’t seem to relish any other food; he always did set a great store by my pie; it wan’t any better than what Hannah made, so fer as I could see, but he always ’lotted on havin’ the corner-piece when he brought me eggs from the farm.’ Miss Jane’s secret was not so hard to discover as was the secret of the Little Room. ‘I would like to talk with Hiram,’ said Nan. ‘Oh, Hiram he’ll talk till doomsday, once set him goin’, and say pretty smart things too, for a man.’ ‘Hiram, can’t you tell us something about the old house?’ asked Nan the next morning, as Hiram rose from the kitchen table where he had been taking the solace of a corner-piece of Jane’s huckleberry pie. ‘That depends,’ said Hiram, ‘upon what you want to know. I s’pose I can tell as much as anybody.’ ‘What we really want to know,’ said Rita, candidly, ‘is whether there was a closet or a little room on the north side of the Keys house, between the front and the back rooms.’ Hiram rubbed his ear carefully and began in a judicial way: ‘When Jonathan Keys first built that house, some time way back in 1700, he planned to have--’