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Updated: June 28, 2025
A year's silence had removed it so far from the noisy stream of life that flowed by it, that I felt, as I pushed at the rusty door-lock, as if I were passing into some old garret of Time, where he had thrown forgotten rubbish too worn-out and antiquated for present use. A strong scent of musk greeted me at my entrance, which I found came from a box of it that had been broken upon the hall-floor.
All sorts of mechanics' tools are clumsy and inconvenient: the turner's lathe moves by broken impulses; door-hinges are made to order, and lift the door from the ground as it opens upon them; all nails and tacks we hand-made; window-sashes are contrived to be glazed without putty, and the panes are put in from the top, so that to repair a broken glass the whole sash is taken apart; cooking-stoves are unknown to the native cooks, who work at an open fire, with crane and dangling pot-hooks; furniture is put together with wooden pegs instead of screws; you do not buy a door-lock at a hardware store, you get a fabbro to make it, and he comes with a leathern satchel full of tools to fit and finish it on the door.
The door-lock was in full working order now, and he was admitted by the same little maid whom he remembered seeing before. Upon his inquiry for Judge Gray he was told that that gentleman was receiving another caller and had asked to be undisturbed for a short time, but if he could wait
Not only was the door-lock "on the latch" as usual, but Dick Lee had been vaguely expected to stay at home. There, again, Mrs. Myers had taken too much for granted; and she had not said a word to him about it.
Here I thought it best to give a rattle at the door-lock; for, as I live, there was old Mrs. Shum a-walkin down the stairs! It appears that one of the younger gals, a-looking out of the bed-rum window, had seen my master come in, and coming down to tea half an hour afterwards, said so in a cussary way. Old Mrs.
"The curious thing about it was that I never exactly knew the subject of his nightmare, and a more curious thing yet was Melford himself never knew it, when I woke him up. He said he couldn't make out anything but a kind of scraping in a door-lock.
Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, meditating on the great theme which absorbs my thoughts. My eye was caught by the bright bolt of my door-lock, the part of the bolt between the lock and the catch showing, beyond question, that the door was fastened. Some one on the outside had turned a key upon me.
This room, it was clear, lay near to the sea-shore; for the wind without seemed as if it would tear up the very foundations of the walls. The old man searched anxiously in his bundle of keys, and at length applied an old rusty key to the door-lock. Not without visible signs of anxiety he then proceeded to unlatch the door.
And, after all, New York was a civilized city, and I could be sure of the girl's safety behind the street door-lock and that of my apartment door. So I refused to yield to the impulse to go back and assure myself that she was all right. I must find a hotel and get a good night's sleep. In the morning, undoubtedly, I would see the episode in a less romantic fashion.
At last I heard voices without I started from the examination of a pencil drawing but partly finished, but the artist of which I could not be deceived in I listened the sounds drew near I could not distinguish who were the speakers the door-lock turned, and I rose to make my well-conned, but half-forgotten speech; and oh, confounded disappointment, Mrs. Herbert, the house-keeper, entered.
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