own room, by the head of the bed that stood
along the wall, how one of the panels slid back from its place,
discovering a little space behind where a man might very well keep his
papers or his money.

"Not a living soul," he said, "knows of that, besides Dolly and myself.
You are at liberty to use that, Cousin Roger, if you like."

I thanked him; and said I would do so.

The rest of that day I spent in going about the house, and acquainting
myself with it all. My Cousin Dorothy shewed me the rooms. Her own was a
little one at the head of the stairs; and she told me, smiling, that a
ghost was said to walk there.

"But I have never been troubled with it," she said. "It is a tall old,
woman, they say, who comes up the stairs and into the room; but she does
no harm to anyone."

Next her room, along the front of the house, lay two other greater
rooms, one with a fire-place and one without: then was my chamber, and
then her father's: and upstairs were the attics where the men lay. The
maids lay in two little rooms above the kitchen.

It was mighty pleasant to me to be with my Cousin Dorothy. She had
changed her riding clothes into others more suitable for a country
maid--with a white starched neckerchief that came down upon her
shoulders, and a grey dress and petticoat below that. Her sleeves were
short, as the custom is in the country, with great linen cuffs folded
back upon them, so as to leave her hands and arms to the elbow free for
her occupations. But most of all I loved her simplicity and her
quietness and her discretion. Her father bade her expressly to shew me
all the house; or she would not have done it, for she was very maidenly
and modest; but as soon as he said that, she did it without affectation.
She shewed me the parlour too, with the hangings upon the walls, and the
chapel of the Grail, with the Grail itself upon an altar within, flanked
by two candlesticks, that was represented over the fire-place. She came
out with me too to shew me the bakehouse where the baking was already
begun, and the brewhouse--both of which too were all built of timber and
plaster; and there my Cousin Tom came upon us, and carried me off to see
his garden and his pasture; for he farmed a few acres about here, and
made a good profit out of it: and it was while I walked with him that
for the first time I understood what his intention was towards me.

He was speaking, as he very often did, of his daughter Dorothy--which I
had ta