"Now, Joe, go back to Mr. Gray, tell him that we have been talking
together, and that you are truly sorry, and will try to do better, and
that this time, and for my sake, I hope that you may be let off from
the Preay Chamber."
I went back, and with tears and catchings of the breath I repeated the
message. Mr. Gray listened; and when I had done, he said:
"Joe, you are a very naughty boy; but as you say that you are sorry, and
will try to mend, and as dear Mrs. Gray intercedes for you, you need not
go this time to the Preay Chamber. But remember, it is only for this
time."
I was like a victim suddenly released from the stake, and the narrow
escape I had had from the mysterious chamber of doom made that dungeon
still more awful. There were very few sentences to the chamber
afterward, and gradually its name disappeared from our talk and from our
fear. Now and then some boy asked, "What has become of the Preay
Chamber?" But nobody answered. If an older boy asked Mr. or Mrs. Gray,
they only smiled, and said nothing. The terror gradually died away, and
the chamber of horrors became a mere legend. Long afterward it was known
that it was all a kindly but deceitful understanding between Mr. and
Mrs. Gray. If a young boy did wrong, and it was thought that reproof and
the mere dread of punishment would be penalty severe enough, it was
agreed that Mr. Gray would send the offender to Mrs. Gray to be immured
in the Preay Chamber. That message was a hint to her to beg--or, in the
French language, _prier_--that for this once the culprit, upon his
promise to do better, should be pardoned.
There is no doubt that the fear of the chamber exercised some restraint
upon mischievous boys. But it was a kind of deceit which is in itself
mischievous. The very name still haunts my imagination, although I am a
bald-headed old boy, for what the most secret chamber of the Inquisition
was to the timid heretic, the Preay Chamber was to the little boy I used
to be.
[Illustration: CHESTNUTTING.--DRAWN BY W. P. SNYDER.]
[Illustration]