They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as they went,
to admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, and everything
quiet and in its place, doubted whether they should go farther. One man,
however, remarking that they had not yet been into the garret, and that
it was there he had been last seen, they agreed to look there too, and
went up softly; for the mystery and silence made them timid.
After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing each other,
he who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turned the handle
of the door, and, pushing it open, looked through the chink, and fell
back directly.
'It's very odd,' he whispered, 'he's hiding behind the door! Look!'
They pressed forward to see; but one among them thrusting the others
aside with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, and
dashing into the room, cut down the body.
He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hung himself on an
iron hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling--in the very
place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate, little creature,
had so often been directed in childish terror, fourteen years before.
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