I can conceive, even, that this might be
of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only
the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle,
although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two
parts could be united across the sea, like the wires of an electric
telegraph."
"It is an impressive idea," said the old man. "Do you know any such
tradition as you have hinted at?"
April 13th.--Middleton could not but wonder at the singular chance that
had established him in such a place, and in such society, so strangely
adapted to the purposes with which he had been wandering through England.
He had come hither, hoping as it were to find the past still alive and in
action; and here it was so in this one only spot, and these few persons
into the midst of whom he had suddenly been cast. With these reflections
he looked forth from his window into the old-fashioned garden, and at the
stone sun-dial, which had numbered all the hours--all the daylight and
serene ones, at least--since his mysterious ancestor left the country.
And [is] this, then, he thought to himself, the establishment of which
some rumor had been preserved? Was it here that the secret had its
hiding-place in the old coffer, in the cupboard, in the secret chamber,
or whatever was indicated by the apparently idle words of the document
which he had preserved? He still smiled at the idea, but it was with a
pleasant, mysterious sense that his life had at last got out of the dusty
real, and that strangeness had mixed itself up with his daily experience.
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