Uncle Simeon did not improve on closer acquaintance; nor on closer reflection did my chance of foregoing that acquaintance improve. Just as he abandoned all pretence of being kind and affable, so I began to abandon all hope of getting back to Tawborough for the present. How could I escape him? gave place to: How could I harm him?

I soon came to see that he was in constant fear of something. Slight sounds and movements would make him start. Sometimes when we were talking he would slink away suddenly as though to reassure himself that all was well in some other part of the house. Could I somehow expose him, triumph over him?

In those days Torribridge Quay, though much decayed, was far livelier than it is today; the river-side was dark with masts, and you could still see the serried line of brown sails: trading ships that plied the routes to the Indies and the two Americas. Number One was a substantial square-looking house hard by the bridge. It was dark, darker even than No. 8 Bear Lawn and very much bigger. The house had belonged to Uncle Simeon's brother, and came to him when the brother died. On the ground floor were three big living rooms—in only one of which we lived. The first floor contained a gloomy sort of drawing-room of enormous dimensions, known to me as the thrashing-room, and five bedrooms. Three of these were large, one being occupied by Uncle Simeon and Aunt Martha, and the other two permanently untenanted. Two smaller bedrooms were used respectively by Albert and myself. Two narrow staircases led to the garrets, the front one to "my" attic (I call it such because I was locked therein not less than three times a week), a small bare apartment with one window, so high in the wall that I could barely see out of it even when standing on tip-toe; the back one to Uncle Simeon's "study." Here he concocted potions if any of us were ill, and here for long hours at a stretch he studied the Word of God. Sometimes he spent whole days there, descending only for meals. This back staircase to the second storey was from the first forbidden to me, forbidden in so marked and threatening a manner as to arouse my curiosity. It was on my second or third day that he found me loitering about near the foot of it. He came upon me suddenly in his carpet-slipper way. I started. He started too.

"If one were to find you where one forbids you to go"—he looked expressively up the narrow staircase—"if—well, one thinks it would be better not."

His words had, of course, the opposite effect to that he intended. I determined to risk a rush up this staircase. There were difficulties. I was never alone in the house, and the creaky uncarpeted floor would be sure to give me away. My strong impulse towards obedience, whether the fruits of a nine-year-long rÉgime of thorned stick, or of natural instinct, or both, also counselled leaving well alone. Again, fear was a deterrent, especially when I found that he was watching me; though this stimulated curiosity as well as fear. For some days the battle, Curiosity versus Fear, raged within me: a passion of curiosity as to the mystery of the forbidden room, a lively sense of what Uncle Simeon's mood and methods would be like if he caught me there.

One day I plucked up courage for an attempt. I took off my shoes and tip-toed upstairs. The old stairs creaked villainously. To every creak corresponded a twinge of fear in my heart; I waited each time to see if anything had been heard. At last I reached the top in safety. The key was in the lock inside the door, so I could see nothing. It was some seconds before I realized the fact that the key was inside proved that Uncle Simeon was probably there! For a moment I stood petrified with fear. As he did not seem to have heard me, however, a swift descent was my best policy.

It was some days before I recovered enough spirit to make a second attempt: one afternoon, after tea, when Uncle Simeon was out. This time there was no key in the door, but it was too dark to see much. All I could make out was a big square box, painted dark green, straight ahead of the key-hole—a safe, though I did not know it—and, by peering up, a dark thing which looked like a big hole in the top of the wall. This was disappointing; next day I seized an opportunity of going up earlier. I could see the big green box quite clearly, and could confirm my idea that the black thing was a large square hole in the wall. There was nothing more to be seen, and I returned for a cautious descent. But my feet refused to move.

There at the foot of the narrow staircase was the white leering face. I was caught, without escape or excuse.

I stood still with fright, waiting for him to say something, to come up to the little landing on which I stood, to touch me, maul me, strike me. He slunk up the stairs. While he came along, smiling, smiling, I stood numbed and helpless. We were the cowering hypnotized rabbit and the sure triumphant serpent. But no, as he came nearer I saw that his face bespoke anything but triumph. There was the same fear and anxiety I had noticed on the first day, and in addition a queerer look I seemed to remember in some more poignant though less definite way. That half-hunted half-hunter look, sneer of triumph distorted by fear, what was it? What string of my memory did it touch? As he reached the top I saw he was sweating with fright, and his fear assuaged mine. I was by now excited rather than frightened, and puzzled even more. He peered into my face. It was an unpleasant moment, quite alone with him on that tiny lonely landing at the top of the house. I feared I did not know what. He clawed my shoulder.

"Trapped, young miss, trapped. One will bear with much, but with disobedience never" (a sniff). "If this should happen again,—but ha! ha! one has something, something very sure, that will prevent that. Something that stings and cuts and curls, ha! ha! Something worse than one's poor mere cane."

"What?" I said faintly.

"A whip," he whispered. As my fear grew, so his lessened. Then the queer unremembered look came to his face again, and he changed his tone completely. His grasp of my shoulder was transformed from a menace into a coax.

"Well, well, we will say no more about it, we will say no more about. We," he repeated meaningly. (With anybody else I should not have noticed the word, which fell strangely from his lips. "One will say no more," was his natural phrase.) "If you hold your tongue and don't tell your Aunt Martha I found you here—there'll be no flogging." It was a tacit pact. He descended the staircase, and I followed him.

I thought perhaps I might learn something by pumping Albert.

"What is there in your father's study?" I asked him casually on a walk.

"Oh, some old bottles and books; nothing much, father lets me go in sometimes, but there's nothing special to see."

This was a genuinely casual reply. It puzzled me. If the room was so mysterious, why did Uncle Simeon take Albert there, yet forbid me entrance with such obvious fear? "He thinks I'm sharper," I flattered myself. This was true, but it explained very little. My curiosity grew. I rehearsed every detail: the green box, the hole in the wall, Uncle Simeon's original veto, and his extreme fear the day he caught me.

And that look? Where had I seen it? I racked my brains without success. Then one night in bed, with a mad suddenness it flashed into my mind as these things do. It was the self-same look I had noticed at Bear Lawn on Aunt Jael's seventieth birthday when we were talking about his brother and how he died and I had said artlessly: "Perhaps it was Poison?" The expression on his face that day was the same as when he clutched me on the staircase.

The dead brother was part of the same mystery as the attic.

Wild ideas coursed through my head. The so-called study was one vast poison-den. The dead brother's skeleton was lying there, the bones were strewn about the floor. Or he had been pushed through the strange black hole in the wall—where did that hole lead to? or his body had been squashed into the green box.

I resolved to raise the poison topic in front of him, and to watch the effect. I would mention it as though quite by accident, and look as artless as I could. Necessity which sharpens all things, had equipped me with a special cunning to achieve the chief aim of my existence: the smallest possible number of beatings. But all my cunning never reduced the least little bit in the world my extreme timidity. Thus while I was quite equal to preparing beforehand a seemingly offhand question for Uncle Simeon as to Poison, I quailed at the thought of actually putting it. I simply dared not talk to him direct, nor should I be able to look at him so closely if I did. I decided to introduce the topic to Aunt Martha one day when he should also be present. Should I begin talking about the dead brother, or more specifically about poisoning? The latter was more difficult to introduce, but a more crucial test. How could I begin a conversation about poison? I prepared a hundred openings, none of which seemed natural. As usual the opportunity came unexpectedly. Thanks to my scheming I was not quite unprepared.

One evening Uncle Simeon was sitting at the dining-room table reading the Word, while Aunt Martha was discoursing to me on God's Plan of Salvation, exhorting me to repentance while it was not yet too late. "Ah, how great is the likelihood of hell for every one of us! For you, my child, it is woefully great. You, who have been brought up in the glory of the Light, who have communed from your earliest days with the Saints—"

"The Saints, my dear?" sniffed Uncle Simeon, "one would hardly say the Saints. To be sure there are many true and earnest believers like your dear mother and dear Miss Vickary amongst them; yet the Open Brethren are for the most part but weak vessels. Only we of the Inner Flock are truly entitled to be called the Brethren, the Saints. But proceed, my dear."

"Well, my dear, though your uncle is of course right, none will deny that you have had more light shed upon your path than many poor little children. Think of the little black children out in Africa and India, think even of the little ones in England who have Methodist or Churchgoing or Romanish fathers and mothers. Unless you are saved, what will you do if the Lord takes you suddenly? Are you ready to face Him? Are you ready to die? There are many, you know, whom the Lord calls away very, very suddenly. Today they are, tomorrow they are not. One moment healthy and strong, the next white and stark. The Lord takes them in an instant—"

"Like Uncle Simeon's brother," I broke in. "Didn't the Lord take him very suddenly?"

I managed to keep my voice steady and to watch him while pretending I was not. He tried to pretend he was not watching me. Whether I betrayed my excitement I do not know. He was certainly uneasy.

"Yes, my child, the Lord took him in a moment. It was never known of what disease he went." She spoke in her usual lifeless way. She suspected nothing.

"Perhaps his heart?" I said learnedly. It was a favourite ailment of Miss Salvation Clinker's; 'er 'eart. "Or perhaps he had eaten something that was not good for him, too much laver or some mussels or periwinkles, maybe?" Here again my dietetic insight was based on Miss Salvation's lore. I was killing time while I summoned up courage for the crucial word—"or—or—took something that poisoned him?"

The word was out and it had gone home. He did not scold me as he ordinarily would have done for talking so much. I saw him looking sickly and frightened by the glare of the lamp by which he was pretending to read. Then he got up hurriedly and left the room.

I began to rack my brains for some more ordinary remarks to cover my retreat. Aunt Martha saved me the trouble. "Poison," she said, "nonsense, most likely heart failure."

"Yes," I replied, "Miss Salvation Clinker says all sudden deaths come from heart failure."

"All sudden deaths come because the Lord calls," she corrected. "The Lord called him, that was all. If He calls you, be ready."

What I had so far discovered came to this: first, that talk of his brother's death brought a queer look to Uncle Simeon's face; second, that if you spoke of poison there was the same look; third, that it was one and the same with the expression on his face the day he caught me outside his study door. In my heart I had already charged him with the worst of all crimes. I was determined by hook or crook to get into that study; to solve that mystery, which had the shadow of death—and of Uncle Simeon—upon it.

This was about the end of August 1859. Then for a few weeks a happier interest came into my life. But here again the shadow of Uncle Simeon interposed, and darkened the happy dream.