Shading the light of her candle with
her hand, she ventured close to the admiral's door, and saw, to her
surprise, that the bed had been moved since she had seen it in the
day-time, so as to stand exactly across the door, and to bar the way
entirely to any one who might attempt to enter the admiral's room.
After this discovery, old Mazey himself, snoring lustily, with the red
fisherman's cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and the blankets drawn
up to his nose, became an object of secondary importance only, by
comparison with his bed. That the veteran did actually sleep on
guard before his master's door, and that he and the admiral and the
housekeeper were in the secret of this unaccountable proceeding, was now
beyond all doubt.
"A strange end," thought Magdalen, pondering over her discovery as she
stole upstairs to her own sleeping-room--"a strange end to a strange
day!"
CHAPTER II.
THE first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen was, to all
appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret Trust than on the
day when she first entered on her service at St. Crux.
But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight lost.
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