I opened the paper and looked at it.

Alas! it was only her marriage certificate; I had taken all this trouble and all this risk, only to rescue for her the proof of her union with one John Silverthorn Brainard.

The same name was on her letters.

Why had Bess so strongly insisted on a secret search, and why had she concealed her license in so strange a place?
Greatly sobered, I restored the paper to its place in the box, slipped on the string and prepared to leave the cellar with it.

Then I remembered the brick on the floor and the open hole where it had been, and afterward the something which had fallen over within and what this space might mean in a seemingly solid wall.
More excited now even than I had been at any time before, I thrust my hand in again and tried to sound the depth of this unexpected far-reaching hole; but the size of my arm stood in the way of my experiment, and, drawing out my hand, I looked about for a stick and finding one, plunged that in.