With some difficulty the flag was raised, and a chamber of stone work, large enough to receive a moderately-sized crock or pit, was disclosed.  Alas! it was empty.  But in the earth at the bottom of it, Miss Baily said, she herself saw, as every other bystander plainly did, the circular impression of a vessel:  which had stood there, as the mark seemed to indicate, for a very long time.

Both the Miss Bailys were strong in their belief hereafterwards, that the treasure which they were convinced had actually been deposited there, had been removed by some more trusting and active listener than their father had proved.

This same governess remained with them to the time of her death, which occurred some years later, under the following circumstances as extraordinary as her dream.

The Earl’s Hall

The good governess had a particular liking for the old castle, and when lessons were over, would take her book or her work into a large room in the ancient building, called the Earl’s Hall.  Here she caused a table and chair to be placed for her use, and in the chiaroscuro would so sit at her favourite occupations, with just a little ray of subdued light, admitted through one of the glassless windows above her, and falling upon her table.

The Earl’s Hall is entered by a narrow-arched door, opening close to the winding stair.  It is a very large and gloomy room, pretty nearly square, with a lofty vaulted ceiling, and a stone floor.  Being situated high in the castle, the walls of which are immensely thick, and the windows very small and few, the silence that reigns here is like that of a subterranean cavern.  You hear nothing in this solitude, except perhaps twice in a day, the twitter of a swallow in one of the small windows high in the wall.

This good lady having one day retired to her accustomed solitude, was missed from the house at her wonted hour of return.  This in a country house, such as Irish houses were in those days, excited little surprise, and no harm.  But when the dinner hour came, which was then, in country houses, five o’clock, and the governess had not appeared, some of her young friends, it being not yet winter, and sufficient light remaining to guide them through the gloom of the dim ascent and passages, mounted the old stone stair to the level of the Earl’s Hall, gaily calling to her as they approached.

There was no answer.  On the stone floor, outside the door of the Earl’s Hall, to their horror, they found her lying insensible.  By the usual means she was restored to consciousness; but she continued very ill, and was conveyed to the house, where she took to her bed.