desperately back to their sources— she fought
with the clinging pain, and wrenched it from its
hold. Little by little, her mind began to clear
again: the despairing fear of herself, grew less
vividly present to her thoughts. There were
reserves of youth and strength in her, still to be
wasted— there was a spirit, sorely wounded, but
not yet subdued.

She gradually extended the limits of her walk;
she gradually recovered the exercise of her
observation.

At the western extremity, the remains of the
monastery were in a less ruinous condition than
at the eastern. In certain places, where the
stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made
at some former time. Roofs of red tile had been
laid roughly over four of the ancient cells;
wooden doors had been added; and the old
monastic chambers had been used as sheds to
hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux. No
padlocks guarded any of the doors. Magdalen
had only to push them, to let the daylight in
on the litter inside. She resolved to investigate
the sheds, one after the other—not from curiosity;
not with the idea of making discoveries of any
sort. Her only object was to fill up the vacant
time, and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her
from returning to her mind.

The first shed she opened, contained the
gardener's utensils, large and small. The second
was littered with fragments of broken furniture,
empty picture-frames of wormeaten wood,
shattered vases, boxes without covers, and books
torn from their bindings. As Magdalen turned
to leave the shed, after one careless glance round
her at the lumber that it contained, her foot
struck something on the ground which tinkled
against a fragment of china lying near it. She
stooped, and discovered that the tinkling
substance was a rusty key.

She picked up the key, and looked at it. She
walked out into the air, and considered a little.
More old forgotten keys were probably lying
about among the lumber in the sheds. What, if
she collected all she could find, and tried them,
one after another, in the locks of the cabinets and
cupboards now closed against her? Was there
chance enough that any one of them might fit, to
justify her in venturing on the experiment? If
the locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the
furniture— if there were no protective niceties of
modern invention to contend against— there was
chance enough beyond all question. Who could
say whether the very key in her hand might not
be the lost duplicate of one of the keys on the
admiral's bunch? In the dearth of all other
means of finding the way to her end, the risk was
worth running. A flash of the old spirit sparkled
in her weary eyes, as she turned, and re-entered
the shed.

Half an hour more brought her to the limits of
the time which she could venture to allow herself
in the open air. In that interval, she had searched
the sheds from first to last, and had found five
more keys. " Five more chances!" she thought
to herself, as she hid the keys, and hastily
returned to the house.

After first reporting herself in the housekeeper's
room, she went up-stairs to remove her
bonnet and shawl; taking that opportunity to
hide the keys in her bed-chamber, until night
came. They were crusted thick with rust and
dirt; but she dared not attempt to clean them,
until bedtime secluded her from the prying eyes
of the servants, in the solitude of her room.

When the dinner hour brought her, as usual,
into personal contact with the admiral, she was
at once struck by a change in him. For the first
time in her experience, the old gentleman was
silent and depressed. He eat less than usual,
and he hardly said five words to her, from the
beginning of the meal to the end. Some
unwelcome subject of reflection had evidently fixed
itself on his mind, and remained there persistently,
in spite of his efforts to shake it off. At
intervals through the evening, she wondered with
an ever-growing perplexity what the subject
could be.

At last, the lagging hours reached their end,
and bedtime came. Before she slept that night,
Magdalen had cleaned the keys from all
impurities, and had oiled the wards, to help them
smoothly into the locks. The last difficulty that
remained, was the difficulty of choosing the time
when the experiment might be tried, with the
least risk of interruption and discovery. After
carefully considering the question overnight,
Magdalen could only resolve to wait and be
guided by the events of the next day. The
morning came; and, for the first time at St.
Crux, events justified the trust she had placed
in them. The morning came— and the one
remaining difficulty that perplexed her, was
unexpectedly smoothed away by no less a person
than the admiral himself! To the surprise
of every one in the house, he announced at
breakfast, that he had arranged to start for
London in an hour; that he should pass the
night in town; and that he might be expected
to return to St. Crux in time for dinner on the
next day. He volunteered no further explanations,
to the housekeeper, or to any one else—
but it was easy to see that his errand to London
was of no ordinary importance in his own
estimation. He swallowed his breakfast in a violent
hurry; and he was impatiently ready for the
carriage, before it came to the door.

Experience had taught Magdalen to be
cautious. She waited a little, after Admiral
Bartram's departure, before she ventured on trying
her experiment with the keys. It was well she
did so. Mrs. Drake took advantage of the
admiral's absence to review the condition of the
apartments on the first floor. The results of the
investigation by no means satisfied her; brooms
and dusters were set to work; and the housemaids
were in and out of the rooms perpetually,
as long as the daylight lasted.

The evening passed; and still the safe
opportunity for which Magdalen was on the watch,