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"You’d shoot him if you did right, Master Charlie. You never heard what a noise he kept up all last night in the gun room, walking to and fro growling like a tiger in a show; and, say what you like, the dog’s not worth his feed; he hasn’t a point of a dog; he’s a bad dog. "

"I know a dog better than you  and he’s a good dog!" said the squire, testily.

"If you was a judge of a dog you’d hang that ‘un," said Cooper.

"I’m not a-going to hang him, so there’s an end. Go you, and get the key; and don’t be talking, mind, when you go down. I may change my mind. "

Now this freak of visiting King Herod’s room had, in truth, a totally different object from that pretended by the squire. The voice in his nightmare had uttered a particular direction, which haunted him, and would give him no peace until he had tested it. So far from liking that dog today, he was beginning to regard it with a horrible suspicion; and if old Cooper had not stirred his obstinate temper by seeming to dictate, I dare say he would have got rid of the inmate effectually before evening.

Up to the third story, long disused, he and old Cooper mounted. At the end of a dusty gallery, the room lay. The old tapestry, from which the spacious chamber had taken its name, had long given place to modern paper, and this was mildewed, and in some places hanging from the walls. A thick mantle of dust lay over the floor. Some broken chairs and boards, thick with dust, lay, along with other lumber, piled together at one end of the room.

They entered the closet, which was quite empty. The squire looked round, and you could hardly have said whether he was relieved or disappointed.

"No furniture here," said the squire, and looked through the dusty window. "Did you say anything to me lately  I don’t mean this morning  about this room, or the closet  or anything  I forget "

"Lor’ bless you! Not I. I han’t been thinkin’ o’ this room this forty year. "

"Is there any sort of old furniture called a buffet  do you remember?" asked the squire.

"A buffet? Why, yes  to be sure  there was a buffet, sure enough, in this closet, now you bring it to my mind," said Cooper. "But it’s papered over. "

"And what is it?"

"A little cupboard in the wall," answered the old man.

"Ho  I see  and there’s such a thing here, is there, under the paper? Show me whereabouts it was. "

"Well  I think it was somewhere about here," answered he, rapping his knuckles along the wall opposite the window. "Ay, there it is," he added, as the hollow sound of a wooden door was returned to his knock.

The squire pulled the loose paper from the wall, and disclosed the doors of a small press, about two feet square, fixed in the wall.

"The very thing for my buckles and pistols, and the rest of my gimcracks," said the squire. "Come away, we’ll leave the dog where he is. Have you the key of that little press?"

No, he had not. The old master had emptied and locked it up, and desired that it should be papered over, and that was the history of it.

Down came the squire, and took a strong turn-screw from his gun case; and quietly he
reascended to King Herod’s room, and, with little trouble, forced the door of the small press in the closet wall. There were in it some letters and canceled leases, and also a parchment deed which he took to the window and read with much agitation. It was a supplemental deed executed about a fortnight after the others, and previously to his father’s marriage, placing Gylingden under strict settlement to the elder son, in what is called "tail male. " Handsome Charlie, in his fraternal litigation, had acquired a smattering of technical knowledge, and he perfectly well knew that the effect of this would be not only to transfer the house and lands to his brother Scroope, but to leave him at the mercy of that exasperated brother, who might recover from him personally every guinea he had ever received by way of rent, from the date of his father’s death.