“Now then,” said Miriam, when they had closed the door behind them, “how shall we explore the house?  Shall we each take a lamp, or will candles be better?”

“Little girl!” exclaimed her brother, “I had no idea that you were such a bunch of watch springs.  It is nearly nine o’clock, and after the day’s work that you have done, it is time you were in bed.  House exploring can be done to-morrow.”

“Yes, indeed, Miss,” said Phoebe, who stood by, anxious to shut up the house and retire to her own domicile, “and I will go up into your room with you and show you about things.”

Half an hour after this, Miriam came out of her bedroom, holding a bit of lighted candle in her hand.  She was dressed, with the exception of her shoes.  Softly she advanced to the foot of the stairs which led to the floor above.

“They are partly my stairs,” she said to herself, as she paused for a moment at the bottom of the step.  “Ralph told me that he considered the place as much mine as his, and I have a right to go up.  I cannot go to sleep without seeing what is up here.  I never imagined such a third floor as this one.”

In less than a minute, Miriam was slowly creeping along the next floor of the house, which was indeed an odd one.  For it was nothing more than a gallery, broader at the ends than the sides, with a railed open space, through which one could look down to the floor below.  Some of the doors were open and she peeped into the rooms, but saw nothing which induced her to enter them.  Having made the circuit of the gallery, she reached a narrow staircase which wound still higher upward.

“I must go up,” she said; “I cannot help it.”

Arrived at the top of these stairs, Miriam held up her candle and looked about her.  She was in a great, wide, magnificent, glorious garret!  Her soul swelled.  To own such a garret was almost too much joy!  It was the realization of a thousand dreams.

Slowly advancing, she beheld fascinations on every side.  Here were old trunks, doubtless filled with family antiquities; there was a door fastened with a chain and a padlock—­there must be a key to that, or the lock could be broken; in the dim light at the other end of the garret, she could see what appeared to be a piled-up collection of boxes, chests, cases, little and big, and all sorts of old-fashioned articles of use and ornament, doubtless every one of them a treasure.  A long musket, its stock upon the floor, reclined against a little trunk covered with horse-hair, from under the lid of which protruded the ends of some dusty folded papers.

“Oh, how I wish Ralph were here, and that we had a lamp.  I could spend the night here, looking at everything; but I can’t do it now with this little candle end.”

At her feet was a wooden box, the lid of which was evidently unfastened, for it lay at an angle across the top.

“I will look into this one box,” she said, “and then I will go down.”