The old man shuffled into the house, and threw open the blinds of the
darkened room. Some one had set the books in neat piles on the table;
the chairs were placed against the wall. The drapery had been washed and
stretched smoothly across the mattress. There were two or three dark
stains on the floor that could not be washed out. The slim little
slipper still decked the wall.

I looked up at the door by the chimney. "Here's the key," said the old
man, brokenly. "I found it to-day under the mattress." I tried it, but
it did not turn in the lock. I was hardly tall enough to reach it. The
old man fetched me a chair on which I stood, and after a moment or two I
felt the rusty lock yield. The little door gave and opened.

Nothing was there, nothing but the dust of years that blackened my
fingers, as I put in my hand, unconvinced by my sense of sight.

"Are you sure no one has been here, no one who could open the closet?"

"Nobody," he proclaimed in the cracked tone of extreme age. "She must
have wandered when she told you that. People wander when they are dying,
you know. Her mother--but that was long ago." He tapped the key
thoughtfully on the mantel. "You see how the lock stuck, and the door. I
don't expect Agnes had it open for years. I expect she wandered, like
her mother." He peered vaguely in at the empty space, and then turned to
me. "I forget a great deal now. I'm getting an old man, a very old man,"
he said, in an explanatory tone.

"But did you know she had letters somewhere, a pile of papers? You
remember her getting letters, do you not, letters from her lover?"