of great
daring, I finally crept up those steps, I remember very well my
sensation at finding myself in front of a narrow closed door. It
suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather's little room--the door in
the wainscot which we were never to open. I had my first real trembling
fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled by this obstruction I
stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the fall, left me in
total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For my imagination
which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of the forbidden
room, immediately began to people the space about me with ghoulish
figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little room
again undetected and in safety?

"But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found
back into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious
of having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was
gone--not my match-box, but my grandfather's which I had found lying on
his table and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of
irresponsible youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to
his not missing it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that
morning, was one thing; to lose it was another. It was no common
box. Made of gold and cherished for some special reason well known to
himself, I had often hear him say that some day I would appreciate its
value, and be glad to own it. And I had left it in that hole and at
any minute he might miss it--possibly ask for it! The day was one of
torment. My mother was away or shut up in her room. My father--I don't
know just what thoughts I had about him. He was not to be seen either,
and the servants cast strange looks at me when I spoke his name. But
I little realized the blow which had just fallen upon the house in his
definite departure, and only thought of my own trouble, and of how I
should meet my grandfather's eye when the hour came for him to draw me
to his knee for his usual good-night.

"That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have
to lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been.
Such an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as
I lay a