"To be sure; so tell me, do you recollect Mr. Deverell's losing a paper in that room?"
"Well, I do mind the time he said he lost it there, but I know no more than the child unborn."
"They said a deal o' bad o' Sir Harry, and them that should a' stood up for him never said a good word for him. Poor old creature!--I doubt if he had pluck to do it. I don't think he had, poor fellow!"
"Did he ever _tell_ you he had done it? Come, remember your promise."
"Yes, I do," said she, with a slight defiant frown.
"Because, shortly after the row began about that paper, he talked with me, and said there was something a-troubling of him, and he wished me to go and live in a farm-house at Applehythe, and keep summat he wanted kep safe, as there was no one in all England so true as me--poor old fellow! He never told me, and I never asked. But I laid it down in my own mind it was the paper Mr. Deverell lost, that's all."
"Did he show you where that thing was which he wanted you to take charge of?"
"He showed me a sort of a box, and he said that was all."
"A little trunk of stamped red leather--was that like it?"
"Did he afterwards give it into anybody's charge?"
"I know no more about it. I saw it there, that's all. I saw it once, and never before nor since."
"Is there more than one secret door into that room?" pursued Varbarriere.
"More than one; no, never as I heard or thought."
"Where is the door placed with which _you_ are acquainted?"
"Suppose I know of two. We have discovered a second. Which is the one you saw used? _Come!_"
Parenthetically it is to be observed that no such discovery had been made, and Varbarriere was merely fishing for information without disclosing his ignorance.
"In the recess at the right of the bed's head."
"Yes; and how do you open it? I mean from the green chamber?"
"I never knowd any way how to open it--it's from t'other side. There's a way to bolt it, though."
"There's an ornament of scrowl-work, they calls it, bronze-like, as runs down the casing of the recess, shaped like letter esses. Well, the fourteenth of them, reckoning up from the bottom, next the wall, turns round with your finger and thumb; so if anyone be in the green chamber, and knows the secret, they can stop the door being opened."
