The furniture had been sold to pay the expenses of the funeral, and a few trifling bills; and, save the kitchen and the two attics, the empty house, uninhabited, was surrendered to the sportive mischief of the idle urchins, who prowled about the silent chambers in fear of the silence, and in ecstasy at the space.

The bedroom in which Caleb had died was, indeed, long held sacred by infantine superstition.

But one day the eldest boy having ventured across the threshold, two cupboards, the doors standing ajar, attracted the child's curiosity.

He opened one, and his exclamation soon brought the rest of the children round him.

Have you ever, reader, when a boy, suddenly stumbled on that El Dorado, called by the grown-up folks a lumber room?
Lumber, indeed! what Virtu double-locks in cabinets is the real lumber to the boy! Lumber, reader! to thee it was a treasury! Now this cupboard had been the lumber-room in Caleb's household.