As this thought rushed over me, I came near crying
out, 'The house of doom! The house of doom!' I had thought to
brave its terrors and its crimes and it has avenged itself. But
instead of that, I pressed your hand with mine and smiled. O
God! if you could have seen what lay beneath that smile! For,
with my entrance beneath those fatal doors a thought had come.
I remembered my heritage. I remembered how I had been told by
my father when I was a very little girl, - I presume when he first
felt the hand of death upon him, - that if ever I was in great
trouble, - very great trouble, he had said, where no deliverance
seemed possible - I was to open a little golden ball which he
showed me and take out what I should find inside and hold it close
up before a picture which had hung from time immemorial in the
southwest corner of this old house. He could not tell me what I
should encounter there this I remember his saying - but something
that would assist me, something which had passed with good effect
from father down to child for many generations. Only, if I would
be blessed in my undertakings, I must not open the golden ball nor
endeavor to find out its mystery unless my trouble threatened death
or some great disaster. Such a trouble had indeed come to me, and
- startling coincidence - I was at this moment in the very house
where this picture hung, and - more startling fact yet - the
golden ball needed to interpret its meaning was round my neck - for
with such jealousy was this family trinket always guarded by its
owner.
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