At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less ruinous condition than at the eastern.  In certain places, where the stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time.  Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells; wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been used as sheds to hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux.  No padlocks guarded any of the doors.  Magdalen had only to push them to let the daylight in on the litter inside.  She resolved to investigate the sheds one after the other—­not from curiosity, not with the idea of making discoveries of any sort.  Her only object was to fill up the vacant time, and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her from returning to her mind.

The first shed she opened contained the gardener’s utensils, large and small.  The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture, empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without covers, and books torn from their bindings.  As Magdalen turned to leave the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled against a fragment of china lying near it.  She stooped, and discovered that the tinkling substance was a rusty key.

She picked up the key and looked at it.  She walked out into the air, and considered a little.  More old forgotten keys were probably lying about among the lumber in the sheds.  What if she collected all she could find, and tried them, one after another, in the locks of the cabinets and cupboards now closed against her?  Was there chance enough that any one of them might fit to justify her in venturing on the experiment?  If the locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the furniture—­if there were no protective niceties of modern invention to contend against—­there was chance enough beyond all question.  Who could say whether the very key in her hand might not be the lost duplicate of one of the keys on the admiral’s bunch?  In the dearth of all other means of finding the way to her end, the risk was worth running.  A flash of the old spirit sparkled in her weary eyes as she turned and re-entered the shed.

Half an hour more brought her to the limits of the time which she could venture to allow herself in the open air.  In that interval she had searched the sheds from first to last, and had found five more keys.  “Five more chances!” she thought to herself, as she hid the keys, and hastily returned to the house.

After first reporting herself in the housekeeper’s room, she went upstairs to remove her bonnet and shawl; taking that opportunity to hide the keys in her bed-chamber until night came.  They were crusted thick with rust and dirt; but she dared not attempt to clean them until bed-time secluded her from the prying eyes of the servants in the solitude of her room.