Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 230: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

224 Roanoke of Roanoke Hall, be? Tidly wondered. Something, no doubt, with regard to the missing treasure, but what, or how, I could by no ingenuity conceive. I sat late revolving these doubts in my mind, until, anxious not to alarm my wife by too ‘prolonged an absence, I withdrew, fully de- termined to undertake next morning a closer examination of the portrait than I had ag yet attempted. : It was placed, as I have remarked on a previous occasion, at some considerable height from the ground. I can with ease stand upright in the vast yawning fireplace, and as the picture was above that it was not pos- sible to see it distinctly ; but so confident was. I that in it lay concealed the only clue to the mystery I was so anxious to unravel that the first thmg next morning I procured a ladder, and placing it against the mantel- piece ascended until my face was on a level with that of the portrait. It was, as I had already noticed from below, framed in the panelling, and it oc- curred to me that it not improbably con- cealed an aperture in the wall behind. I' pressed upon it, but it seemed to be perfectly COMMEHOOMECOM