I read in the library until late, hearing the howl of

the wind outside with satisfaction in the warmth and

comfort of the great room. Bates brought in some sandwiches

and a bottle of ale at midnight.

"If there's nothing more, sir-"

"That is all, Bates." And he went off sedately to his

own quarters.

I was restless and in no mood for bed and mourned

the lack of variety in my grandfather's library. I moved

about from shelf to shelf, taking down one book after

Advertisement..

another, and while thus engaged came upon a series of

large volumes extra-illustrated in water-colors of unusual

beauty. They occupied a lower shelf, and I

sprawled on the floor, like a boy with a new picture-book,

in my absorption, piling the great volumes about me.

They were on related subjects pertaining to the French

chateaux.

In the last volume I found a sheet of white note-paper

no larger than my hand, a forgotten book-mark,

I assumed, and half-crumpled it in my fingers before I

noticed the lines of a pencil sketch on one side of it. I

carried it to the table and spread it out.

It was not the bit of idle penciling it had appeared

to be at first sight. A scale had evidently been followed

and the lines drawn with a ruler. With such trifles my

grandfather had no doubt amused himself. There was

a long corridor indicated, but of this I could make nothing.

I studied it for several minutes, thinking it might

have been a tentative sketch of some part of the house.

In turning it about under the candelabrum I saw that

in several places the glaze had been rubbed from the

paper by an eraser, and this piqued my curiosity. I

brought a magnifying glass to bear upon the sketch.

The drawing had been made with a hard pencil and the

eraser had removed the lead, but a well-defined imprint

remained.

I was able to make out the letters N. W. 3/4 to C.-

a reference clearly enough to points of the compass and

a distance. The word ravine was scrawled over a rough

outline of a doorway or opening of some sort, and then

the phrase: THE DOOR OF BEWILDERMENT Now I am rather an imaginative person; that is why

engineering captured my fancy. It was through his trying

to make an architect (a person who quarrels with

women about their kitchen sinks!) of a boy who wanted

to be an engineer that my grandfather and I failed to hit

it off. From boyhood I have never seen a great bridge or

watched a locomotive climb a difficult hillside without

a thrill; and a lighthouse still seems to me quite the

finest monument a man can build for himself. My

grandfather's devotion to old churches and medieval

houses always struck me as trifling and unworthy of a

grown man. And fate was busy with my affairs that

night, for, instead of lighting my pipe with the little

sketch, I was strangely impelled to study it seriously.




Most Popular