 Section 1 of Three Ghost Stories. Hello, below there! When he heard a voice descalling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furrowed round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came, but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him. So steep did the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all. Hello, below! From looking down the line, he turned himself about again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him. Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you? He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had forced to draw me down. When such vapor as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by. I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him, all right, and made for that point. There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched out which I followed. The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitated. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path. When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand. His dover his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped the moment, wondering at it. I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, cello-man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in a solitary and dismal of place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a steep of sky, the perspective one way, only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon, the shorter perspective in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy deadly smell, and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me as if I had left the natural world. Before his turn I was near enough to have touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand. This was a lonesome pose to occupy, I said, and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose, not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped. In me he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly awakened interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him, but I am far from sure of the terms I used, for besides that I am not happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me. He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel's mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and then looked at me. That light was part of his charge, was it not? He answered in a low voice, Don't you know it is? The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the Saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since whether there may have been infection in his mind. In my turn I stepped back, but in making the action I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight. You look at me, I said, forcing a smile, as if you had a dread of me. I was doubtful, he returned, whether I had seen you before. Where? He pointed to the red light he had looked at. There, I said, intently watchful of me, he replied, but without sound, yes. My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear. I think I may, he rejoined. Yes, I am sure I may. His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes. That was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear. But exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work, manual labor. He had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle down and then, was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours, of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form. And he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here. If only to know it by sight, and to have affirmed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra. But he was, and had been, as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him, when on duty, always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions, there would be less upon the line than under others. And the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower shadows. But being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it was redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose. It took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and, I hoped I might say without offence, perhaps educated about that station. He observed that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men. That he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army. And that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young, if I could believe it sitting in that hut, he scarcely could, a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures. But he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another. All that I have here condensed, he said in a quiet manner, with his grave dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the word sir, from time to time, and especially, when he referred to his youth, as though to request me to understand, that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was done. In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity. But for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me, he twice broke off with a fallen color, turned his face towards the little bell, when it did not ring, opened the door of the hut, which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp, and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him, which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far asunder. Said I, when I rose to leave him, he almost made me think that I have met with a contented man. I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on. I believe I used to be so. He rejoined in the low voice in which he had first spoken. But I am troubled, sir, I am troubled. He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them, however, and I took them up quickly. With what? What is your trouble? It is very difficult in part, sir. It is very, very difficult to speak of. If you ever make me another visit, I will try to tell you. But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall it be? I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-morrow night, sir. I will come at eleven. He thanked me, and went out at the door with me. I will show you my white light, sir. He said, in his peculiar low voice, till you have found the way up. When you have found it, don't call out. And when you are at the top, don't call out. His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me. But I said no more than very well. And when you come down to-morrow night, don't call out. Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry hello or below there, to-night? Heaven knows, said I. I cried something to that effect. Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well. Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below. For no other reason? What other reason could I possibly have? You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way? No. He wished me good night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the downed line of rails, with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me, until I found the path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure. Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zig-zag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. I had not called out, I said, when we came close together. May I speak now? By all means, sir. Good night, then, and here is my hand. Good night, sir, and here is mine. With that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire. I have made up my mind, sir. He began bending forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you for someone else yesterday evening. That troubles me. That mistake? No, that someone else. Who is it? I don't know. Like me? I don't know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is waved, violently waved, this way. I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm gesticulating with the utmost passion and vehemence. For God's sake, clear the way. One moonlight night, said the man, I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, Hello, below there, I started up, looked from that door, and saw this someone else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, Look out, look out, and then again, Hello, below there, look out, I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure calling, What's wrong? What has happened? Where? It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. They advanced so close upon it, that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it was gone. Into the tunnel, said I, No, I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains tilling down the walls, and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in, for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me, and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways, and alarm has been given, is anything wrong? The answer came back, both ways, all well. Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight, and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their reflection, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. As to an imaginary cry, said I, do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires. That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires, he, who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching, but he would beg to remark that he had not finished. They asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm. Within six hours after the appearance, the memorable accident on this line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood. It is a grieble shutter crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, and it deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added, for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me. Men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life. He again begged to remark that he had not finished. I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions. This, he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the specter again. He stopped with a fixed look at me. Did it cry out? No. It was silent. Did it wave its arm? No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, its both hands before the face, like this. Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures and tombs. Did you go up to it? I came in, and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone. But nothing followed, nothing came off this. He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a ghastly nod each time. That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver's top. He shut off and put his brake on. But the train drifted past here 150 yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us. Involuntarily, I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself. True, sir, true, precisely as it happened. So I tell it to you. I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail. He resumed, now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The specter came back a week ago, ever since it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts. At the light? At the danger light. What does it seem to do? He repeated, if possible, with increased passion and vehemence, that former gesticulation of, for God's sake, cleared the way. Then he went on. I had no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonized manner. Below there, look out, look out. It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell. I caught at that. Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you went to the door? Twice. Why, see? said I. How your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell. And if I am a living man, it did not ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when it was wrong in the natural course of physical things by the meditation communicating with you. He shook his head. I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the specter's ring with the man's. The ghost's ring is a strange vibration in the bell, that it derives from nothing else. And I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don't wonder that you failed to hear it, but I heard it. And did the specter seem to be there when you looked out? It was there. Both times? He repeated firmly. Both times. Will you come to the door with me and look for it now? He bit his underlip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was a danger light. There was it his small mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them. Did you see it? I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot. No, he answered. It is not there. I agreed, said I. We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage. If it might be called one. When he took up the conversation in such a matter of course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions. By this time you will fully understand, sir. He said, that what troubles me so dreadfully is a question. What does the specter mean? I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand. What is it's warning against? He said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by time is turning them on me. What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time after what has gone before, but surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do? He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead. If I telegraph danger on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it. He went on, wiping the palms of his hands. I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work. Message, danger, take care, answer, what danger, where? Message, don't know, but for God's sake, take care. They would displace me. What else could they do? His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life. When it first stood under the danger light, he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress. Why not tell me where that accident was to happen? If it must happen. Why not tell me how it could be averted? If it could have been averted. When on its second coming it hid its face. Why not tell me instead? She is going to die. Let them keep her at home. If it came on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third. Why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord, help me, a mere poor signalman on the solitary station. Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed and powered to act? When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, sitting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm. The occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention. And I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it. That I more than once looked back at the red light as I assented the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it. I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either. But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure. I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact, but how long might he remain so in his state of mind, though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I, for instance, like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision? Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating, what he had told me to his superiors in the company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him, otherwise keeping his secret for the present, to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night. He had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly. Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal man's box. Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his arm. The nameless horror that apprised me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The danger light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low-hot, entirely no to me, had been made of some wooden supports and terpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed. With an irresistible sense that something was wrong, with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did, I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make. What is the matter, I asked the man. Signal man killed this morning, sir. Not the man belonging to that box? Yes, sir. Not the man I know. You would recognize him, sir, if you knew him? Said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head and raising an end of the terpaulin, for his face is quite composed. Oh, how did this happen? How did this happen? I asked, turning from one to another as the hot closed again. He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better, but somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just that broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was twirred, sir, and she cut him down. That man drove her and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom. The man, who wore a rough, dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel. Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir, he said, I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective glass. There was no time to take speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn't seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him and called to him as loud as I could call. What did you say? I said, bellow there, look out, look out, for God's sake, clear the way. I started. Ah, it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left of calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last, but it was no use. Without prolonging, the narrative did well on any of its curious circumstances, more than on any other, I may, in closing it. Point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine-driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself, not he, had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the destagulation he had imitated. End of Section 1. Section 2A of Three Ghost Stories. This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by Marion Brown. Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens. The Haunted House, Chapter 1. The Mortals in the House. Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas peace. I saw it in the daylight with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwanted circumstance of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that, I had come to it direct from a railway station. It was not more than a mile distant from the railway station, and as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people. And there are my vanity steps in. But I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning. The manner of my lighting on it was this. I was travelling towards London out of the north, intending to stop by the way to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country, and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had gotten to the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up, and had sat looking out of the window at the brilliant northern lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at all, upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night, as that opposite man always has, several legs to many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct, which was only to be expected of him, he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them under a general supposition that he was in the civil engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanor became unbearable. It was a cold, dead morning, the sun not being up yet, and when I had outwatched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow traveller and said, I beg your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me? For really he appeared to be taking down either my travelling cap or my hair, with a minute-ness that was a liberty. The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance, In you, sir? Be. Be, sir? said I, growing warm. I have nothing to do with you, sir, return the gentleman. Pray let me listen. O. He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down. At first I was alarmed. For an express lunatic and no communication with the guard is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a rapper, one of a sect for some of whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don't believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth. You will excuse me, said the gentleman contemptuously. If I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it, I have passed the night, as indeed I pass the whole of my time now, in spiritual intercourse. O. said I, somewhat snappishly. The conferences of the night began, continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his notebook with this message. Evil communication corrupt good manners. Sound, said I, but absolutely new. New from spirits, returned the gentleman. I could only repeat my rather snappish O. and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication. A bird in the hand, said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, is worth two in the Bosch. Truly I am of the same opinion, said I, but shouldn't it be Bosch? It came to me Bosch, returned the gentleman. The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are 17,479 spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling. Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. I am glad to see you, amigo. Camistá? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Adió. In the course of the night also the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name Bubbler, for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton, suspected of willful mystification, had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scattington, and Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle where he was learning to paint on velvet under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary, Queen of Scots. If this should meet the eye of the gentlemen who favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the rising sun and the contemplation of the magnificent order of the vast universe made me impatient of them. In a word I was so impatient of them that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of heaven. By that time it was a beautiful morning, as I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden brown and russet trees, and as I looked around me on the wonders of creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging and harmonious laws by which they are sustained, the gentlemen's spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of journey work as ever this world saw, in which heathen state of mind I came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively. It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden, a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of George II, as stiff as cold as formal and in as bad taste as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had within a year or two been cheaply repaired to render it habitable. I say cheaply because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colors were fresh. A lopsided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was, to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished. It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and in particular there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the sight of which had been extremely ill-chosen. It was easy to see that it was an avoided house, a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off, a house that nobody would take, and the natural interference was that it had the reputation of being a haunted house. No period within the four and twenty hours of day and night is so solemn to me as the early morning. In the summer time I often rise very early and repair to my room to do a day's work before breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep, in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us, and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipate of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending, the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation. All are images of death. The tranquility of the hour is the tranquility of death. The colour and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar household objects take upon themselves when they first merge with the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer, as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsistence of the worn face of maturity, or age in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover I once saw the apparition of my father at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving I could not discern. Amazed to see him there I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed and watched him. As he did not move I spoke to him more than once. As he did not move then I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder, as I thought, and there was no such thing. For all these reasons and for others less easily and briefly stateable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would be more or less haunted to me in the early morning, and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then. I walked on into the village with the desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn sanding his doorstep. I bespoke breakfast and broached the subject of the house. Was it haunted? I asked. The landlord looked at me, shook his head and answered, I say nothing. Then it is haunted. Well! cried the landlord in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation. I wouldn't sleep in it. Why not? If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring with nobody to ring him, and all the doors in a house bang with nobody to bang him, and all sorts of feet treading about with no feet there, I then said the landlord, I'd sleep in that house. Is anything seen there? The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for icky. The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad, humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great-sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way, if it were not pruned, of covering his head and overrunning his boots. This gentleman wants to know, said the landlord, if any things seen at the poplars, ordered woman with a howl, said icky, in a state of great freshness. Do you mean a cry? I mean a bird, sir. A hooded woman with an owl. Or me. Did you ever see her? I seen the howl. Never the woman. Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together. Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl? Lord bless you, sir, lots. Who? Lord bless you, sir, lots. The general dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop? Perkins. Bless you. Perkins wouldn't go an eye the place. No, observed the young man with considerable feeling. He ain't overwise, ain't Perkins. But he ain't such a fool as that. Here the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins knowing better. Who is, or who was, the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know? Well, said icky, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other. They say in general that she was murdered. And the howl he hooded the while. His very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hardy and as likely a young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in him after seeing the hooded woman. Also that a personage dimly described as an old chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp answering to the name of Joby unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, Why not? And even if so, mind your own business. Had encountered the hooded woman a matter of five or six times. But I was not materially assisted by these witnesses in as much as the first was in California and the last was, as icky said, and he was confirmed by the landlord, anywheres. Now although I regard with the hushed and solemn fear the mysteries between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change, that fall on all the things that live, and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them, I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such like insignificances with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the divine rules that I am permitted to understand. That I have been able a little while before. To yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow traveller in the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses, both abroad. In one of these an old Italian palace which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms which were never used and possessed in one large room in which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations to the landlord, and to this particular house having a bad name. I reasoned with him. Why how many things had bad names undeservedly? And how easy it was to give bad names. And did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the neighborhood had sold himself to the devil, he would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture. All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord. I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life. To cut this part of the story short, I was peaked about the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it. So after breakfast I got the keys from Perkins's brother-in-law, a whip and harness-maker who keeps the post-office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the doubly-succeeding little Emanuel persuasion, and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey. Within I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees were doleful in the last degree. The house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry-rot, and there was a flavor of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's hands whenever it's not turned to man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large and too remote from each other. Off-stairs and below waste-tracks of passage intervene between patches of fertility represented by rooms, and there was a moldy, old well with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap near the bottom of the back stairs, under the double row of bells. One of these bells was labeled on a black ground in faded white letters, Master B. This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most. Who was Master B., I asked. Is it known what he did while the owl hooted? Rang the bell, said Ike. I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell and rang it himself. It was a loud, unpleasant bell and made a very disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to which their wires were conducted, as picture-room, double-room, clock-room, and the like. Following Master B.'s bell to its source, I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock loft, with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master B. in his spiritual condition always made a point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ike could suggest why he made such a fool of himself. Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished but sparely. Some of the furniture, say a third, was as old as the house, and the rest was of various periods within the last half-century. I was referred to a corn chandler in the marketplace of the county town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months. It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden sister. I ventured to call her eight and thirty. She is so very handsome, sensible, and engaging. We took with us a deaf, stable man. My bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an odd girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one of the St. Lawrence's Union female orphans, and that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement. The year was dying early. The leaves were falling fast. It was a raw, cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook, an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect, burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister. Two top-and-stocks gardens, Liggs Walk, Clapham Rise, in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The odd girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sewing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak. We went before dark, through all the natural as opposed to super-natural miseries incidental to our state. Dispirating reports ascended, like the smoke, from the basement and volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling pin, there was no salamander, which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is. There was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken. The last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be? Through these distresses the odd girl was cheerful and exemplary, but within four hours after dark we had gotten to a super-natural groove, and the odd girl had seen eyes, and was in hysterics. My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any of them for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the odd girl had seen eyes. No other explanation could ever be drawn from her. Before nine, and by ten o'clock, had had as much vintage applied to her as would Pickle a handsome salmon. I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o'clock, Master B's bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house resounded with his lamentations. I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so un-Christian as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know, but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B's neck, in other words, breaking his bell off short, and silencing that young gentleman as to my experience and belief forever. But by that time the odd girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a guy fox, endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B's room and balked the paper, and taken Master B's bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behavior than would most un-questionably have brought him with the sharpest particles of a birch broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being such as I was capable of these contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits? I say I would become emphatic and caudant, not to say rather complacent in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the odd girl suddenly stiffening from the toes upward and glaring among us like a parochial petrifaction. Streaker the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman became a mere distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I have ever met with. Even with these characteristics was a peculiar tenacity of hold in these specimens so that they didn't fall but hung upon her face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the admirable crickton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook likewise always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the house was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes regarding her silver watch. As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us. There is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded woman? According to the accounts we were in a perfect convent of hooded woman. Noises? With that contagion downstairs I myself have sat in the dismal parlor listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises that they would have chilled my blood if I had not been warned by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night. Try this at your own comfortable fireside, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system. I repeat, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women, their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling salts, were always primed and loaded for a swoon and ready to go off with hair triggers. The two elder detached the odd girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If cook or streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling, and this took place so constantly that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called the auctioneer to every domestic he met with. It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened. For the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl, it was in vain to discover by striking as accidental discord on the piano that Turk always howled at particular notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a ratamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave to have it down inexorably and silence it, it was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants and dejectedly said to my sister, we changed servants and it was no better. The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. At last our comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganized and wretched that I one night dejectedly said to my sister, Patti, I begin to despair of our getting people to go on with us here. I think we must give this up. My sister, who was a woman of immense spirit, replied, no, John, don't give it up, don't be beaten, John, there is another way. And what is that? said I. John, returned my sister, if we are not to be driven out of this house, and that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into our own hands. But the servant said I. Have no servants, said my sister boldly. Like most people in my great of life, I had never thought of the possibility of going on without these faithful obstructions. The notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful. We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and we know they are frightened and do infect one another. Said my sister. With the exception of bottles I observed in a meditative tone. The deaf, stable man, I kept him in my service and still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England. To be sure, John, assented my sister, accept bottles, and what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody, unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has bottles ever given or taken, none. This was perfectly true. The individual in question having retired every night at ten o'clock to his bed over the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water, that the pail of water would have been over me and the pitchfork through me if I had put myself without announcement in bottles way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man he had sat at his supper with his streaker present in a swoon, and the old girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help himself to beef-stake pie. And so continued my sister, I exempt bottles, and considering John that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be well kept in hand by bottles, you and me, I propose that we cast about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and willing, form a society here for three months, wait upon ourselves and one another, live cheerfully and socially, and see what happens. I was so charmed with my sister that I embraced her on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardor. We were then in the third week of November, but we took our measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily and mustered in the haunted house. I will mention in this place two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained, and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not be expected to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Aiki if he were a judge of a gun. On his saying, yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her. I beg the favor of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine. She's a true one, sir, said Aiki, after inspecting a double barreled rifle that I had bought in New York a few years ago. No mistake about her, sir. Aiki said I—don't mention it. I have seen something in this house. No, sir. He whispered greedily opening his eyes. Would it, lady, sir? Don't be frightened, said I. It was a figure, rather, like you. Lord, sir—Aiki, said I, shaking hands with him warmly as I may say affectionately. If there is any truth in these ghost stories, the greatest service I can do you is to fire at that figure. And I promise you, by heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again. The young man thanked me and took his leave with some little precipitation after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to him because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell. Because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap lying not far from the bell one night when it had burst out ringing. And because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Aiki know injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted, and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The odd girl's case was exactly similar. She went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and willfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me here to account for this preposterous state of mind. I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent one who has had fair medical legal or other watchful experience that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted, and that it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind. To return to our party, the first thing we did when we were all assembled was to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom, and indeed the whole house having been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a gypsy party, or a yachting party, or hunting party, or a shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B, with others still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender, who went up and down carrying the ghost of a round table, and also to an impalatable jackass whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not there to be deceived, or to deceive, which we'd considered pretty much the same thing, and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the truth. The understanding was established that anyone who heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door, lastly, that on twelfth night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences, since that then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the good of all, and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable provocation to break silence. We were, in number and in character, as follows. First, to get my sister and myself out of the way. There were we, too. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I drew Master Bees. Next, there was our first cousin, John Herschel, so called after the great astronomer, than whom I suppose a better man at a telescope does not breathe. With him was his wife, a charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous spring. I thought it, under the circumstances, rather impotent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may do at such a time. But I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been my wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the clock-room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight and twenty, through whom I have the greatest liking, was in the double-room. Mine, usually, and designated by that name, from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep from shaking in any weather, wind or no. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be fast, another word for loose as I understand the term, but who is much too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before now if his father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his banker may break, or that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty percent, for I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune is made. Women debates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable and delightful girl, got the picture-room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and goes in to use an expression of Alfred's for women's mission, women's rights, women's wrongs, and everything that is women's with a capital W, or is not an ought to be, or is an ought not to be. Just praiseworthy, my dear, and heaven prosper you. I whisper to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the picture-room door. But don't overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of women than our civilization has as yet assigned to her. Don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the real oppressors of your sex. Or trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers. And the play is, really, not all wolf and red riding-hood, but has other parts in it, however, I digress. Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the picture-room. We had but three other chambers, the corner-room, the cupboard-room, and the garden-room. My old friend Jack Governor slung his hammock, as he called it, in the corner-room. I have always regarded Jack as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago, nay, handsomer, a portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver setting. He has been wherever his union namesake flies has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean, and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried, You know, Jack Governor? Then you know a prince of men. That he is, and so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet him, coming out of an Eskimo snow hut in a seal skin, you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform. Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister, but it fell out that he married another lady, and took her to South America where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef, for he is always convinced that all salt beef, not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably when he goes to London packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one Nat Beaver, an old comrade of his, captain of a merchant man, Mr. Beaver with a thick set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At times there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the lingering result of some old illness, but it seldom lasted many minutes. He got the cupboard room, and lay there next to Mr. Undery, my friend and solicitor, who came down in an amateur capacity to go through with it, as he said, and who plays wist better than the whole law-list, from the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at the end. I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastry cook and confectioner. Starling and I were Cook's mate, turn and turn about, and on special occasions the Chief Cook pressed Mr. Beaver. We had a great deal of outdoor sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed. We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the first night I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship's lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he was going aloft to the main truck, to have the weather cocked down. It was a stormy night, and I remonstrated, but Jack called my attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be hailing a ghost presently if it wasn't done. So up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the wind we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver, and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weather-cock off, until they both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought they would never come down. Another night they turned out again, and had a chimney cowl off. Another night they cut a sobbing and gulping water-pipe away. Another night they found out something else. On several occasions they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpains to overhaul something mysterious in the garden. The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we knew was, if any one's room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it. CHAPTER II THE GOST IN MASTER BEE'S ROOM When I established myself in the triangular garret, which had gained so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, by sex-style, from his having been born in leap year, Bartholomew or Bill, whether the initial letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker or Bird, whether he was a foundling and had been baptized B, whether he was a lion-hearted boy and B was short for Britain or for Bull, whether he could possibly have been Kith and Kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood and had come of the blood of the brilliant mother bunch. With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the deceased, wondering whether he dressed in blue or boots he couldn't have been bald. Was a boy of brains, liked books, was good at bowling, had any skill as a boxer, even in his buoyant boyhood bathed from a bathing machine at Bogner, Banger, Bernmouth, Brighton or Broad Stairs like a bounding billiard-ball? So from the first I was haunted by the letter B. It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream of Master B or of anything belonging to him. But the instant I woke up from sleep at whatever hour of the night my thoughts took him up and roamed away trying to attach his initial letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet. For six days I had been worried thus in Master B's room when I began to perceive that things were going wrong. The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning, when it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my glass when I suddenly discovered to my consternation an amazement that I was shaving not myself, I am fifty, but a boy, suddenly, Master B. I trembled and looked over my shoulder, nothing there. I looked again in the glass and distinctly saw the features and expressions of a boy who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely troubled in my mind I took a few turns in the room and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to study my hand and complete the operation in which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost I closed my eyes and made a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life. So naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I determined to keep my secret until the time agreed upon for the present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I retired to my room that night, prepared to encounter some new experience of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless. For waking from an easy sleep at exactly two o'clock in the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master B? I sprang up and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive voice saying, Where am I? What has become of me? And looking hard in that direction perceived the ghost of Master B. The young specter was dressed in an obsolete fashion, or rather was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper and salt cloth made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons went in a double row over each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right hand, which I distinctly noticed to be inky, was laid upon his stomach. Connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance and his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine. Where am I? said the little specter in a pathetic voice. And why was I born in the Calomel days? And why did I have all that Calomel given me? I replied with sincere earnestness that upon my soul I couldn't tell him. Where is my little sister? said the ghost. And where are my angelic little wife? And where is the boy I went to school with? I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I represented to him that probably that boy never did within human experience come out well when discovered. I urged that I myself had in later life turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that the boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having been together, at old doilances, he had asked himself to breakfast with me, a social offence of the largest magnitude. How, fanning my weak embers of belief in doilances boys, I had let him in, and how he had proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished, instantly strike off and circulate God knows how many thousand millions of ten and six penny notes. The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare, Barber, it apostrophised me when I had finished. Barber, I repeated, for I am not of that profession. Condemned, said the ghost, to shave a constant change of customers. Now me, now a young man, now thyself as thou art, now thy father, now thy grandfather. Condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning. I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement. Barber, pursue me. I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the phantom I immediately did so, and was in Master B's room no longer. Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who no doubt told the exact truth, particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions, and the torture was always ready. I asseverate that during my occupation of Master B's room I was taken by the ghost that haunted it on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly I was presented to no shabby old man with a goat's horns and tail, something between pan and an old clothesman. Holding conventional reception as stupid as those of real life and less decent, but I came upon other things which appear to me to have more meaning. Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without hesitation that I followed the ghost in the first instance on a broomstick, and afterwards on a rocking horse. The very smell of the animal's paint, especially when I brought it out by making him warm, I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost afterwards, in a hackney coach, an institution with the peculiar smell of which the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with mange, and very old bellows. In this I appealed to the previous generations to confirm or refute me. I pursued the phantom on a headless donkey at least upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it, on ponies expressly born to kick up behind, on roundabouts and swings, from fares, in the first cab, another forgotten institution, where the fair regularly got into bed and was tucked up with the driver. Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from which you may judge of many. I was marvelously changed. I was myself yet not myself. I was conscious of something within me which has been the same all through my life, and which I have always recognized under all its phases and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed in Master B.'s room. I had the smoothest of faces and shortest of legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door and was confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature. This proposition was that we should have a Saraglio. The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respectability. Neither had I. It was the custom of the East. It was the way of the good Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Let me have the corrupted name again for once. It is so scented with sweet memories. The usage was highly laudable and most worthy of imitation. Oh yes, let us, said the other creature with a jump. Have a Saraglio. It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great Harun. Mystery impenetrable shrouded from Miss Griffin. Then let us entrust it to Miss Buell. We were ten in Miss Griffin's establishment by Hampstead Pawns, eight ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Buell, whom I judged to have attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I opened the subject to her in the course of the day and proposed that she should become the favourite. Miss Buell, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to and charming in her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson. Miss Buell, who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady a friendship, haves, and no secrets until death, on the church service, and lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock, Miss Buell said she could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the common. Now Miss Pipson having curly hair and blue eyes, which was my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called fair, I promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a fair Circassian. And what then, Miss Buell principally asked. I replied that she must be invagled by a merchant, brought to me veiled and purchased as a slave. The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the state, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded. Will I not be jealous? Miss Buell inquired, casting down her eyes. Zobaita, no, I replied, you will ever be the favorite Sultana, the first place in my heart, and on my throne it will be ever yours. Miss Buell, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or less black lead. I slipped into Miss Buell's hand after supper a little note to that effect, dwelling on the black lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Messrour the celebrated chief of the blacks of the Harim. There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a low character, and when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the caliph, wouldn't call him commander of the faithful, spoke of him slightly and inconsistently as a mere chap, said he, the other creature, wouldn't play, play, and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of united Siraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the daughters of men. The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among the followers of the prophet, that she saw with a little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But every day after dinner for an hour we were altogether, and then the favourite and the rest of the royal Harim competed who should most beguile the leisure of the serene Harun reposing from the cares of the state, which were generally, as in most affairs of state, of an arithmetical character. The character of the faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum. On these occasions the devoted Mess Rour, chief of the blacks of the Harim, was always in attendance. Miss Griffin usually ringing for that officer at the same time with great vehemence, but never acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first place his bringing a broom into the divan of the caliph, even when Harun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger. Miss Pipson's police, though it might be God over for the moment, was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place his breaking out into grinning exclamations of l'orque eupreties was neither eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when specially instructed to say Bismillah, he always said hallelujah This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humored altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once it was on the occasion of the purchase of the fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold and cheap, too, embraced the slave, the favorite, and the caliph, all around. Parenthetically, let me say, God, bless, misure, and there may have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom, softening many a hard day since. Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known when she paraded us down that Hamstead Road, two and two, that she was walking with a stately step at the head of polygamy and Mohamedianism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy, with which the contemplation of Miss Griffin in this unconscious state inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us, that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin, who knew all things that could be learned out of book, didn't know, were the mainspring of the preservation of our secret. It was wonderfully capped, but was once upon the verge of self- betrayal. The danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head, as we were every Sunday, advertising the establishment in an unsecular sort of way, when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory happened to be read. The moment that Monarch was thus referred to, conscience whispered me, Thou to Harun. The officiating minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole suraglio reddened, as if the sunset of Baghdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this pretentious time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own impression was that church and state had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white sheets and exhibited in the center aisle. But so westerly, if I may be allowed the expression of opposites to Eastern associations, was Miss Griffin's sense of rectitude that she merely suspected apples, and we were saved. I have called the suraglio united. Upon the question solely whether the commander of the faithful, dursed exercise a rite of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided, Zobade asserted a counter-rite in the favorite to scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green bay's bag originally designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the faithful plains of Camden town, wence she had been brought, by traders in the half-yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the holidays, held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that dog and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier, who had no rites and was not in question. At length the difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful slave as deputy. She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the ladies of the Harim. And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I became heavily troubled, I began to think of my mother and what she would say to my taking home at mid-summer eight of the most beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father's income, and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled. The suraglio and malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their lords on happiness, did their utmost to augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity, and declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced to the utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay awake for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my despair I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my country, if an unthought of means of escape had not opened before me. One day we were out walking, two and two, on which occasion the Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turnpike, and if he profanely gazed, which he always did, at the beauties of the Harim, to have him bow-strung in the course of the night, and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the state into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration, both baseless assertions, had secretly, but most pressingly, invited thirty-five neighboring princes and princesses to a ball and supper, with a special stipulation that they were not to be fetched till twelve. This wandering of the antelope's fancy led to the surprising arrival at Miss Griffin's door in divers, ecupages, and other various escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At the beginning of the double-knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the antelope had retired to a back-addict, and bolted herself in. Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender had been followed by solitude in the linen closet, bread and water, and a lecture to all of vindictive length in which Miss Griffin had used expressions. Firstly, I believe you all of you knew of it. Secondly, every one of you is as wicked as another. Thirdly, a pack of little wretches. Under these circumstances we were walking drearily along, and I especially, with my Musselman responsibilities heavy on me, was in a very low state of mind. When a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and after walking on at her side for a little while, and talking with her, looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for Egypt. The whole suraglio cried out when they saw me making off as fast as my legs would carry me. I had an impression that the first turning on the left and round by the public house would be the shortest way to the pyramids. Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back. Miss Griffin only said with a stunning gentleness, this was very curious. Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me? If I had had my breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no answer, having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a sort of state. But not at all, as I couldn't help feeling with astonishment, in culprit state. When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin called into her assistance, Mezrour, chief of the dusty guards of the harem. Mezrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears, bless you, my precious, said that officer turning to me, your paws took bitter bad. I asked with a fluttered heart, is he very ill? Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb, said the good Mezrour kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head to rest on, your paws dead. Haroun al-Rashid took to flight at the words, the suraglio vanished. From that moment I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest of the daughters of men. I was taken home, and there was a dead at home as well as a death, and we had a sail there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a power unknown to me, hazily called the trade, that a brass coal-scuttle, a roasting jack, and a bird cage were obliged to be put into it to make a lot of it. And then it went for a song. So I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it must have been to sing. Then I was sent to a great cold bare school of big boys, where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough. Where everybody large and small was cruel, where the boys knew all about the sail before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched, and who had brought me and hooded at me going, going gone. I never whispered in that wretched place, that I had been haroon, or had had a saraglio, for I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so worried that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer. Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted the boys room, my friends, since I have occupied it. Then the ghost of my own childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief. Many a time have I pursued the phantom, never with this man's stride of mind to come up with it, never with these man's hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man's heart of mine to hold it in its purity. And here you see me working out as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass, a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.