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- 9689
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9623
- text
- matter of indifference to me; though, I confess, as respects the
character of the closet, I cannot but share in a natural
curiosity.
‘Trusting that you may be guided aright, in determining whether it
is Christian-like knowingly to reside in a house, hidden in which
is a secret closet.--I remain, with much respect, yours very
humbly,
‘HIRAM SCRIBE.’
My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged mystery
of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded--for none such had I at
all observed in the master mason during his surveys--but of my late
kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a shipmaster and merchant in the
Indian trade, who, about thirty years ago, and at the ripe age of
ninety, died a bachelor, and in this very house, which he had built. He
was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune. But
to the general surprise, after being at great cost in building himself
this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved, and inexpensive
old age, which by the neighbours was thought all the better for his
heirs; but lo! upon opening the will, his property was found to consist
but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand dollars in stocks;
but the place, being found heavily mortgaged, was in consequence sold.
Gossip had its day, and left the grass quietly to creep over the
captain’s grave, where he still slumbers in a privacy as unmolested as
if the billows of the Indian Ocean, instead of the billows of inland
verdure, rolled over him. Still, I remembered long ago, hearing strange
solutions whispered by the country people for the mystery involving his
will, and, by reflex, himself; and that, too, as well in conscience as
purse. But people who could circulate the report (which they did), that
Captain Julian Dacres had, in his day, been a Borneo pirate, surely were
not worthy of credence in their collateral notions. It is queer what
wild whimseys of rumours will, like toadstools, spring up about any
eccentric stranger, who, settling down among a rustic population, keeps
quietly to himself. With some, inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause
of offence. But what chiefly had led me to scout at these rumours,
particularly as referring to concealed treasure, was the circumstance,
that the stranger (the same who razeed the roof and the chimney) into
whose hands the estate had passed on my kinsman’s death, was of that
sort of character, that had there been the least ground for those
reports, he would speedily have tested them, by tearing down and
rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the memory
of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious,
or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings of ingots united in
my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But the first cool thought soon
dismissed such chimeras; and, with a calm smile, I turned towards my
wife, who, meantime, had been sitting near by, impatient enough, I dare
say, to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a letter.
‘Well, old man,’ said she, ‘who is it from, and what is it about?’
‘Read it, wife,’ said I, handing it.
Read it she did, and then--such an explosion! I will not pretend to
describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that my
daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement. Although they
had never before dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe’s; yet upon
the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of
it. In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my
chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and
the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both
acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition
than the secret closet.
- title
- Chunk 16