My father had placed an iron chest in a secure niche in the dining-room, behind the great central mirror, made for the purpose of concealing it, and to which he alone had access.  Here he had kept a store of plate, money, jewels, and papers, so as to defy all burglarious interference or foreign scrutiny, and, in dying, had bequeathed the secret of the patent lock to Mr. Bainrothe alone.  Old Morton even was ignorant of the contrivance.

I knew of the niche and the iron chest by the merest accident, and had been requested, nay, commanded, by my father, not to speak of either; so, in silence the mystery had almost died out of my recollection, when it was rather singularly revived again in this wise: 

During one of the hottest nights early in September, after our return from Saratoga, I descended, parched with thirst, to the dining-room, about four o’clock in the morning, to seek a glass of iced-water, always to be found there, I knew, by night or day, on the sideboard, in a small silver cistern.

The dawn was dimly breaking through the great window in the hall as I passed down the broad stairway, still in my night-dress and unslippered feet; but, on approaching the dining-room, I was surprised to see the gleam of a candle falling athwart the mirror, which had been swung from its place (as I had seen it once before swung by my father), so as to screen my advancing form from the person evidently at work behind it.  The massive shutters of the room were closed and securely barred, as was the habit of the house, and the room was, consequently, still in darkness, or deep shadow.

As I stood half hidden now, by the arch of the hall, behind which I shrank instinctively, and uncertain how to proceed, I saw Mr. Bainrothe suddenly emerge from behind the mirror, and take from the table near it a canvas bag, small but evidently weighty, from the manner in which he carried it to its place of concealment.

Then I heard the slow, heavy fall of a shower of gold coins, dropping on others, the same sound that had greeted my ear on the day when I first detected this treasure-cave of my father, and as different from the sound of falling silver as is the gurgling of rich old wine from the dash of crystal water.

“The wretch is faithful to his trust, after all.  So this is where he keeps my gold,” I thought; “but how did he find ingress into our castle, supposed at least to be inaccessible by night?  Has he a false key I wonder, and are we above-stairs, with unlocked doors, subject to his visitations, should it occur to him to make them?”

I shuddered at the suggestions of my own fancy.  Women only, who have been similarly situated, can know how dark these may become, even in an innocent mind, from circumstances like those that surrounded me, and what a nameless horror there is about the insidious and licentious approaches of the man we would fain dash away from us, and trample under foot like a serpent, did we dare openly to do so.