"Captain Jermain! How--what?--I do not understand you, sir!" exclaimed Gilbert, growing pale and turning sharply upon the young soldier. Andrew grasped the arm of his chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. Peril, relentless peril--could it be possible?--and from so remote a chance! Dawkin and Roxley looked around from their discussion, surprised at the excited turn the talk behind them had taken. "What's all this in the wind now?" asked Dawkin. "Nothing, except that I am in possession of a family mystery of friend Boyd's here," returned Jermain gayly, "or I think I am. Forgive me, Boyd, but the jest is too good! Let me explain. You must know that Lockett slept sometimes in a room in your old house called--what the mischief was it called?--the Green--the Red--no, the Purple Chamber! That's it, the Purple Chamber; and opening out of this Purple Chamber is a secret room, to be got at by a spring-panel in the wall; a most curious old place altogether--and, by the by, perhaps just the sort of strong room that Tracey and Saville have been wishing for to shut that slippery rascal into to-night. Ha! ha! ha! Boyd, I'm sorry for you, for you see that I did know this little family secret after all, did I not? Oh, man, don't look so tragic over it. See his face, Roxley! By all that is hospitable to mad wags like ourselves here, you shall make amends for your soberness by taking us all upstairs and helping us to find out this wonderful hole. Up, Roxley! Up, Dawkin!" continued the domineering young trooper, already excited by the usquebaugh and full of a boyish delight at having someone to tease who was quite in his power; "you, too, my blue-eyed Andrew! Your father must pilot us upstairs at once, or he is no honest host. Huzzah!" "Huzzah! huzzah!" chimed in Roxley and Dawkin. Jermain seized the candles, and, laughing boisterously, forced one of them into the terrified Boyd's hand. Roxley caught hold of the master's arm. Boyd stood between them, the color of the wall, rigid, his eyes conveying to Andrew a despairing signal. Through the crack of the door were peering Mistress Annan and some women-servants, with blanched cheeks. Ruin had stalked in a few seconds into their midst. Terrible was the temptation to Gilbert Boyd as he was held there in the half-sportive, half-brutal grasp of the dragoons. Yet might one bold falsehood save everything! How easy to cry out, "That wing of my house was burnt to the ground years ago!" or to declare that the Mouse's Nest itself had been opened up and its secrecy destroyed--one of a half-dozen other excuses, proffered with the dignity of a man in his own house might avert the calamity precipitating. Hospitality--the saving of a guest's life--did not these cry out for a lie?