Presently, moved by the sense of sacred security in my heart, I passed once more into the room of silence--not with bravado, but strong in the good armor of self-reliance. I closed and locked the door of the cupboard and walked forth again, feeling no least tremor of the nerves--conscious of nothing to cause it. Thence I went out to the platform, and, levering up the sluice, heard the water discharge itself afresh into the hollow-booming channel that held the secret of the wheel. And now, indeed, that my thoughts were capable of some order of progression, that very secret rose and usurped the throne of my mind, deposing all other claimants. What weird mystery attached to the portrait nailed to the axle? That it was placed there by my father I had little doubt; but for what reason and of whom was it? I recalled his wild command to me to never make reference to aught my eyes might chance to light upon, other than the treasure I had gone to seek. In that direction, then, nothing but silence must meet me. Of whom was the portrait, and what the mystery? On the thought, the attenuated voice of old Peggy came from the kitchen hard by in a cracked and melancholy stave of her favorite song: “I washed my penknife in the stream-- Heigho! I washed my penknife in the stream. And the more I washed it the blood gushed out-- All down by the greenwood side, O!” Old Peggy! When had she first established her ghoulish reign over us? Had she been employed here in my mother’s time? I only knew that I could not dispart her ancient figure and the mill in my memory. I pushed open the door and walked into the kitchen. She was sitting darning by the frouzy little window--a great pair of spectacles on her bony nose--and looked at me with an eye affectedly vacant, as if she were a vicious old parrot speculating upon the most opportune moment for a snap at me. “That’s a pretty song, Peggy,” I said. “And a pretty old ’ooman to sing it,” she answered. “Were you ever young, Peggy?” “Not that I remembers. I were barn wi’ a wrinkle in my brow like a furrow-drain, and two good teeth in my headpiece.” “I dare say. How old were you when you first came here?” “How old? Old enow and young enow to taste wormwood in the sarce gleeted fro’ three Winton brats.” “That’s no answer, you know. What’s your present age?” “One hundred, mebbe.” “Was Modred born when you came?” “Born? Eighteen bard months, to my sorrow. A rare gross child, to be sure; wi’ sprawling fat puds like the feet o’ them crocodillies in the show.” If Peggy could be trusted, I had got an answer which barred further pursuit in that direction. She could never, I calculated, have been personally acquainted with my mother or the circumstances of the latter’s death. Indeed, I could not imagine her tolerated in a house over which any self-respecting woman presided.