CHAPTER LV.

SEARCHING A HOUSE.

Up the crooked staircase the girl turned and shut herself into a little chamber, opposite that in which Jessup had suffered his days of pain--a dainty chamber, in which the windows and bed were draped like a summer cloud, and on a toilet, white as virgin snow, a small mirror was clouded in like ice. Even the coarse nature of Judith Hart was struck by the pure stillness of the place she had come to desecrate, and she stood just within the threshold, as if terrified by her own audacity. "If he were here, I wonder if he would dare touch a thing?" she thought, going back to her purpose. "I wish he had done it himself; I don't like it."

She did not like it; being a woman, how could she? But the power of that bad man was strong upon her, and directly the humane thrill left her bosom. She was his slave again.

"Something may be here," she said, sweeping aside the delicate muslin of the toilet with her rude hands. "Ladies keep their choice finery and love-letters in such places, I know; and she puts on more airs than any lady of the land. Ah, nothing but slippers and boots that a child might wear, fit for Lady Rose herself, with their high heels and finikin stitching. Such things for a gardener's daughter! Dear me, what is the use of a toilet if one cannot load it with pincushions, and things to hold ear-rings, and brooches, and such like! Nothing but boots--such boots, too--under the curtains, and on the top a prayer-book, bound in velvet. Well, this is something."

A small chair stood by the toilet, in which Judith seated herself, while she turned over the leaves of the book, and, pausing at the first page, read, "Ruth Jessup, from her godmother."

"Oh, that's old Mason. Not much that he wants here. No wonder the lass is so puffed up. Velvet books, and a room like this! Well, well, I never had a godmother, and sleep in a garret, under the roof. That's the difference. But we shall see. Only let me find something that pleases him here, and this room is nothing to the one he will give me. Thin muslin. Poh! I will have nothing less than silks and satins, like a born lady. That much I'm bent on."

Flinging down the prayer-book, without further examination, Judith proceeded to search the apartment thoroughly. She examined all the dainty muslins and bits of lace, the ribbons and humbler trifles contained in the old-fashioned bureau. She even thrust her hand under the snowy pillows of the bed, but found nothing save the pretty, lady-like trifles that awoke some of the old, bitter envy as she handled them.

"Now for the old man's room. Something is safe to turn up there," she thought, conquering a superstitious feeling that had kept her from this room till the last. "It's an awful thing to ask of one. I wonder how he would feel prowling through a dead man's chamber like a thief, which I shall be if I find papers, and taking them amounts to that; but he would give me no peace till I promised to come."

The room from which Jessup had been carried out was in chilling order. A fine linen sheet lay on the bed, turned back in a large wave as it had been removed from the body when it was placed in the coffin. A hot-house plant stood on the window-sill, perishing for want of water. The stand upon which Ruth's desk was placed had been set away in a corner, and to this Judith went at once. She found nothing, however, save a few scraps of paper, containing some date, or a verse of poetry that seemed copied from memory; two or three sheets of notepaper had a word or two written on them, as if an impulse to write had seized upon the owner, but was given up with the first words, which were invariably, "My dear--" The next word seemed hard to guess at, for it never found its way to paper; so Judith discovered nothing in her pillage of Ruth's desk, and the failure made her angry.

"He'll never believe I looked thoroughly, though what I am to find, goodness only knows. Every written paper that I lay my hands on must be brought to him. That is what he said, and what I am to do. But written papers ain't to be expected in a house like this, I should say. How am I to get what isn't here, that's the question? Anyway, I'll make a good search. Not much chance here, but there's no harm in looking."

Judith flung the closet-door open, and peered in, still muttering to herself, "Nothing but clothes. Jessup's fustian-coat. Poor old fellow! He'll never wear it again. His Sunday-suit, too, just as he left it hanging. No shelf, no--Stay, here is something on the floor. Who knows what may be under it?"

Judith stooped down, and drew a long garment of gray flannel from the closet, where it seemed to have been cast down in haste. It was Jessup's dressing-gown, which had been taken from him after death.

"Nothing but the poor old fellow's clothes," she thought, growing pale and chilly, from some remembrance that possessed her at the sight of those empty garments. "I will throw the old dressing-gown back, and give it up. The sight of them makes me sick. Well, I've searched and searched. What more can he want of me?"

Judith Hart gathered up the dressing-gown in her hands, and was about to replace it, when a folded paper dropped to her feet. She snatched the paper, thrust the dressing-gown back to the closet, and turned to a window, unfolding her prize as she went.

"His writing. The same great hooked letters, the same hard work in writing! 'To Walton Hurst.' It might be the same, only there is more of it, and the lines ain't quite so scraggly." Even as she talked, Judith held Jessup's letter to an opening in the shutter, and read it eagerly.

More than once Judith read the letter that Jessup had written with his last dying strength, at first with surprise deepening into terror as she went on. Then she fell into solemn thoughtfulness. Being a creature of vivid imagination, she could not stand in that death-chamber with a writing purloined from the murdered man's garments in her hand without a shiver of dread running through all her frame.

In truth, she was fearfully disturbed, and the very blood turned cold as it left her face when she thrust the paper into her bosom, shrinking from it with shudderings all the time.

After this, she remained some minutes by the window, lost in thoughts that revealed themselves plainer than language as they passed over her mobile features.

Then a sound, far down in the park, startled her and she left the house absorbed and saddened. It was well for her chances of escape that the girl left Jessup's cottage at once; for she was hardly out of sight when a group of neighbors from the funeral cortege came back, haunting those rooms with sorrowful countenances, and striving with great kindness to win the lone girl, thus suddenly made an orphan, from the terrible grief into which she had fallen.