box, with which to light my candies. I found my ladder dangling
unnoticed, so I nimbly climbed to my room, pulling it up after
me, like the savages in Polynesia. I lit my candles, intending to
read; but I found that I was far too well inclined to mischief to
pay much heed to my book. Casting about for something to do, I
thought that I would open a little locked door which led to some
(apparently disused) room beyond my own. I had some difficulty in
breaking the lock of this door; but a naughty boy is generally
very patient. I opened it at last, with some misgivings as to
what my uncle might say on the morrow, though with the feeling
that I was a sort of conspirator, or, shall we say, a man
haunting a house, playing ghost, coming at night to his secret
chamber. I was disappointed with the room. Like my own room, it
was nothing more than a long, bare attic. It had a false floor,
like many houses of the time, but there was no thought of
concealment here. Half a dozen of the long flooring planks were
stored in a stack against the wall, so that anyone could see what
lay in the hollow below. There was nothing romantic there. A long
array of docketed, ticketed bundles of receipts filled more than
half the space. I suppose that nearly every bill which my uncle
had ever paid lay there, gathering dust. The rest of the space
was filled with Ephraim's dirty old account books, jumbled
higgledy-piggledy with collections of printed, unbound sermons,
such as used to be sold forty years before, in the great Puritan
time. I examined a few of the sermons, hoping to find some
lighter fare among them. I examined also a few of the old account
books, in the same hope. Other rubbish lay scattered in the
corners of the room; old mouse-eaten saddle-bags mostly. There
were one or two empty baskets, which had once been lined with
silk. In one of them, I can't think why, there was an old empty,