 The Hounded House in two chapters of the Lock and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Julee van Wallachem. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Harthorn. The Hounded House in two chapters by Charles Dickens. 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 a house which is a subject of this Christmas piece. 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 hide in 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-drain 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 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 a house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight and had fallen asleep, and had to agop and had said looking out of the window at the brilliant northern lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had to agop again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at all. On 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 said opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night, as that opposite man always has, several next 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 bums 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 set staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-dired gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable. It was a cold, dead morning, the sun not being up yet, and when I had out-watched the pailing night of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hang 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 any thing particular in me? For really he appeared to be taking down either my travelling-cap, or my hair with a minute-ness that was liberty. The goggle-dired gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the bag 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. Returned the gentleman, pray, let me listen. Oh! he enunciated this foul after a pause, and noted it down. At first I was alarmed, for an express lunatic and no communication with the guard as a serious position. The thought came to my relief that a 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 in the night, as indeed I pass the whole of my time now, in spiritual intercourse. Oh! said I, somewhat snappishly. The conferences of the night began, continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his notebook, with this message. Well-communications corrupt good manners. Sound, said I, but absolutely new. New from spirits, returned the gentleman. I could only repeat my rather snappish—oh!—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. Surely 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 railroad carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine 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, Amico. Gómea star! Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Adieu! In the course of the night also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name Bubbler, for which offend against orthography and good manners, he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton, suspected of wealth or misification, had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Sketchington. 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 aside 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 the time it was a beautiful morning, as I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the gourd and round and russet trees, and as I looked around beyond 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 heaven stayed 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 dinners' bad taste as could possibly be designed by the most loyal admirer of the whole courted 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 colours 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 side 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-espire, some half a mile off, a house that nobody would take, and the natural inference 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 in 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, anticipated of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending, the stopped life, the broken of threats of yesterday, the deserted seed, 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 them, when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of majority or age, in death into the old youthful look. Moreover I once saw the aberration 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 seed 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 set 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 in the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would be more or less hounded to me in the early morning, and a hounded house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then. I walked on into the village, with a 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. "'Is 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 house ring with nobody to ring them, and all the doors in house bang with nobody to bang them, and all sorts of feet trading about with no feet there, why then?' said the landlord. "'I'd sleep in that house. It's anything seen there.' The landlord looked at me again, and then, with this former appearance of desperation, called down his stable yard for, "'Icy!' The coal 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 mudra of pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, seemed 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 anything seen at the poplars.' "'O' did a woman with a howl?' said Ike, in a state of great freshness. "'Do you mean he cry?' "'I mean a bird, sir.' "'A hooded woman with a howl. Dear me, did you ever see her?' "'I see in the howl?' "'Never do woman. Lots of plain as a howl, but they always keep's together.' "'Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the howl?' "'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 in either place.' "'No,' observed a young man, with a considerable feeling. "'Yant overwise, Aunt Perkins, but yant such a fool as that.' Here the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing better. "'Who is, or who was, the hooded woman with a howl? Do you know?' "'Well,' said Ike, holding up his cap with one hand, while he scratched his head with the other. They say in general that he was murdered, and the howl yorted the while. This very concise summary of the fact was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hardy and likely young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down on him after seeing the hooded woman. Also that a personage dimly described as a whole chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp answering through the name of a joeby, lest you challenge 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. Inasmuch as the first was in California, and the last was as Ike said, and he was confirmed by the landlord, anyways. Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear the mysteries between which and this state of existence is interposed a barrier of degrade trial and change in that fall on all 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 insignificant witnesses, with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the divine rules that I am permitted to understand, then I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two hounded houses, both abroad, and one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abundant on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly, notwithstanding that a house had a score of mysterious bedrooms which were never used, and possessed in one large room in which I set reading, times out of number at all hours, an extra which I slept, a hounded chamber of the first retentions. I gently hinted these considerations to the landlord, and as 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 logging 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 by the hounded house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after breakfast, I got a keys from Perkinson's brother-in-law, a whip and harness-maker, who keeps a post-office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the doubly seceding little amul persuasion, and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ike. Within I found it as I had expected, transcendentally dismal. The slowly changing shadows, waved on it from the heavy trees, were dullful 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. There was a flavour of rats in it, and it was a gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's hands, whenever it is not turned to man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from each other. Above stairs and below, waste-tracks of passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms. And there was a morty old well with 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 labelled on a black round in faded white letters, Master Bee. This, they told me, was a bell that rang the most. Who was Master Bee? I asked. Is it known what he did while the owl hooted? Rang the bell? Said Ike. I was rather struck by the prompt extorty with which this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell and rang it himself. It was a loud and pleasant 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 Bee's bell to its sores, I found that young gentleman to have had but a different third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner fireplace, which Master Bee must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for tum-thump. The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of place to re-deering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master Bee, in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ike he could suggest why he made such a fool of himself. Except that a house at 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. The rest was of various periods within the last half-century. I was referred to a corn chandler in the pocket-plate of the county town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months. It was just in the middle of October, when I moved in with my maiden sister, I ventured to call a rate of thirty. She is so very handsome, sensible, and engaging. I took with us a deaf-stable man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called a not-girl. I have reason to record of the attendant, last enumerated, who was one of the St. Lawrence Union female orphans, 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 unbehauling the kitchen, and requested that a silver watch might be delivered over to his sister, two tuppentogs' gardens, legs walk, clap and rise, in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Trigger, the housemaid, fainted cheerfulness, but was a 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 supernatural, miseries incidental to our state. Spiriting reports ascended, like the smoke, from the basement and volumes, and desenered 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 supernatural groove, and the odd girl had seen eyes, and was in hysterics. My sister and I had agreed to keep the hounding 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 one 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 of vinegar applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon. I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these and toward 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 unchristian as to 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 short of, 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 forks and doubt within reason, 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 bulked the paper, and taken Master B's bell away, and bulked the ringing, and if they could suppose that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than which most inquisitably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-room into close acquaintance, in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by this contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits. I said I would become emphatic and cogent, 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 perogial petrification. Streaker, the housemaid too, had an attribute of a most discomforting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of a usual emphatic temperament, or what else was a matter with her, but this young woman became a mere distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics was a peculiar tenacity of horde in those specimens, so that they didn't fall but hung upon a face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the admirable critcheton could have done in a verbal disputation for her powers of money. Cook likewise always covered me with confusion as with the 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, and there is no such contagion in the disguise. Hooded woman? According to the account, you were in a perfect convent of hooded women. Noises? I myself have sat in the dismal parlour, listening until I have heard so many and such strange noises that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it 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 in the disguise. The women, their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling sorts, 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 in the reputation of such adventures by coming back catalaptic. If Cucko Strieger 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 own person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turk always held at particular notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a rudimentus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it downing inexorably and silencing it. It was in vain to fire up chennies, let torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms, and recesses. 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 ejectedly said to my sister, Petty, I begin to despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we must give this up. My sister, who is 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 servants, said I, have no servants, said my sister boldly. Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the possibility of going on without those 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 an immeditative tone. The death-stable man, I kept him in my service, and still keep him as a phenomenon of morose-ness not to be imagined in England. To be sure, John, assented to my sister, accept bottles, and what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is absolutely wrought 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 pail of water would have been over me and the pitchfork threw me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles' way after that minute, I had deposed it 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 set at his supper with his streak present in a swoon and the odd-girl marble, and had only put another potato's cheek, or profited by the general misery, to help himself to beef-stick pie. And so, continued my sister, I exempt Bottles, and, considering John that houses too large and perhaps too lonely to be kept well 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, lift 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 ardour. 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 hounded 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 his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Aiki if he were a judge of a gun, on a saying, Why yes sir, I know it's a good gun when I see sir. I backed a favour over stepping up to the house and looking at mine. She's a true monster, said Aiki, after inspecting a double barrel trifle that I 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, 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 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 you would play false on the hounding 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 alarm 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 man, who has had fair medical, legal, or rather 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 a hunting party, or a shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating room as 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 impalbable 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 here to be deceived, or to deceive, which we 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 then present hour of our coming together in the Houndet House, should be brought to light for the good of all, and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, and lessen 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 two. In the drawing of Lutz, 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, then whom I suppose a better man and 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 imprudent 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, for 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 wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be fast, another word for lose, 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 bank 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. Melinda Bates, 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 woman's mission, woman's rights, woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with a capital W, or is not an ought-to-be, or is an ought-not-to-be. Most praise worthy, my dear, at 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 rage of woman, than our civilisation has 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 natural oppressors of your sex. For, trust me, Melinda, they do some time to 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. Melinda, 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 amok, as he called it in the corner-room. I have always regarded Jack as a finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is grey now, but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago. Nay, handsome-er! A poorly cheery, well-built figure of a broach-ordered man with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those and a darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver-setting. He has been wherever his union namesake flies, says Jack, and I have met all shipmates of him, away in the Mediterranean, and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed and bright and have the casual mention of his name, and have cried, You know, Jack Governor, that you know we're friends of man. That, he is, and so a mistakenly a naval officer, that if you were to meet him coming out of an Eskimo snow hut in Sealskin, 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 a haunted house a little cask of salt-beef, for he's always convinced that all salt-beef, not of his own pickling, is me carrying, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one Ned Beaver, an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantment. Mr. Beaver, with his 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 a seldom last at many minutes. He got the cupboard-room, and lay there next to Mr.undry, my friend and solicitor, who came down in an amateur capacity to go through with it, as he said, and to place Whist better than the whole law-list from the red-covery at the beginning to the red-covery at the end. I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was a 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 cooksmaid, 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 the most wonderful ship's lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep. We informed to me that he was going aloft to the main truck, to have the red-coke down. It was a stormy night, and I remonstrated, but Jack caught 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 red-coke off, until they both got into such good spirits with the wind and the hide, 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 corner-pains, 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 hounded, no one looked at worse for it. Editors' Note The foregoing story is particularly interesting as illustrating the leaning of Dickinson's mind toward the spiritualistic and mystical fancies current in his time, and the counter-balance of his common sense and fun. He probably never made up his own mind, Mr. Randall Lang declares in a discussion of this haunted house-story. Mr. Lang says he once took part in a similar quest, and can recognize the accuracy of most of Dickinson's remarks, indeed, even to persons not on the level of the odd girl in education. The temptation to produce a phenomena for fun is all but overwhelming. That people communicate hallucinations to each other in some diseased way without words is a modern theory perhaps first formulated here by Dickinson's. The Signal Man story, which follows is likewise, Mr. Lang believes, probably based on some real story of the kind, some anecdote of premonitions. There are scores in the records of the Society for Psychical Research. End of Editors' Note End of The Hounded House by Charles Dickinson's Number 1 Branch Line, The Signal Man From The Lock and Key Library This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Julie van Wallyhem The Lock and Key Library Edited by Julian Harthorne Number 1 Branch Line, The Signal Man By Charles Dickens Hello, below there! When he heard a voice this calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box with a flag in his hand, furled around a 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 steeped in 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 the 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 a force to jaw me down. When such vapor as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was coming 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 with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two of 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 precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found a 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 you were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it. I resumed my darn ward 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 a place as ever I saw, on either side, a dripping wet wall of jacked stone, excluding all view but a strip 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 stark chilled to me as if I had left the natural world. Before he stirred, I was near enough to him 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 post you 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 a non-welcom rarity, I hope. 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 a red light, near the teller'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 monster of thought came into my mind as I perused with the fixed eyes and the satin and face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated sins, whether there may have been infection in his mind. It might earn I step back, but in making the action, I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put a monster of thought to flight. He looked 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 in there, you may swear. I think I may, he rejoined. Yes, I'm 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 labour, he had next to none. To change in that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under that hat. Regarding those many long and lowly hours of which I seem to make so much, he could only say that a routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had to taught himself a language down here, if only to know it by sight, and to have formed 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 damn bear, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, there 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 with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose. He 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 style of face and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. Am I trusting that you would excuse the remark, that he had been well educated, and, I hoped I might say without offence, perhaps educated above 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 work houses, 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 above that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another. All that I have here condense, 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 is 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 remarkable 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 said 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 the fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did not ring, opened the door of the hut, which was kept shut to exclude in 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, you almost make me think that I have met with a contented man. I'm 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 to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you. But I express the intent 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'll show my wide 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. It's menacing to make the blaze 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 grow, hello, below there, tonight? I have a nose, said I. I cried something to that effect, not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words I know them well. I 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? You wished me good night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the down-line of rails, with the 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. Puncture to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zig-zag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. It was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. I have not called out, I said, when we came close together. May I speak now? By all means, sir. Good night, then, and here's my hand. Good night, sir, and here's 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, banding 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's 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 a figure calling, What's wrong? What has happened? Where? It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it, that I wandered 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 stealing down the walls, and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in, where 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. An 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 wise. That was all very well, he returned, after he had said listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wise, he who so often passed long winter nights in there, alone and watching, but he would back to remark that he had not finished. I 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 finger-head stood. It is a greeble shudder crapped over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence calculated deeply to impress his mind, but it was inquisitional 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 gained back to remark that he had not finished. I gained back his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions. This, he said, again laying his eyes upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I heard 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 spectre 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, with both hands before the face, like this. Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning. I had seen such an attitude in stone figures on 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 of this. He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice a 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 stop. He shut off and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty 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 lay down on this floor between us. In voluntary, 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 tallied 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 so am I, this, and judged how my mind is troubled. The spectre 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. 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, clear the way. Then he went on. I have 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 rung in the natural cause of physical things by the station, communicating with you. He shook his head. I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre'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 a bell stirs to the eye. I don't wonder that you failed to hear it, but I heard it. And the spectre seemed to be there when you looked out. It was there. Both times. It repeated firmly both times. Where you come to the door with me and look for it now? He bit his underlip, as though you 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 a dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting, and there were the stars above them. Do 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. 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 a specter mean? I was not sure, I taught him, that I did fully understand. What is it warning against? He said, ruminating with his eyes on the fire, and only by times 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 that is a cruel hunting of me. What can I do? He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead. If I telegraph danger on eyes the 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 a 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 pitiful to see. It was a mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life. When it first hit on 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 hit its face, why not tell me instead she is going to die and 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 die, Lord, help me, a mere poor signalman on the solitary station? Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed and power 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, setting aside all question of reality, or random reality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, 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 ascended 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 a consideration how or die to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure. I had proved to a 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 seek 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 taught 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 a 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's 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 sees 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 right arm. The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that his 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 his shaft, a little low-hot, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and talpelin. It looked no bigger than a bed, with an irresistible sense that something was wrong, with a flashing self-repoachful fear that Phaedon, his chief, had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to a local correct what he did, I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make. What is the matter? I asked a man. Signal mine killed this morning, sir. Not the man belonging to that box. Yes, sir. Not a man, I know. You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him, said a man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of the talpelin. For his face is quite composed. Oh, how did this happen? How did this happen? I asked, turning from one to another, as I had closed in again. I asked her down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clearer of the outer rail. It was just a broad day. Yet struck the light and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his bag was to water, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Showed a gentleman, Tom. The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former blaze at the mouth of the tunnel. Coming around 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 check 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 called, running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call. What did you say? I said, Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear the way! I started. 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 to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that a warning of the engine driver included not only the words which the unfortunate signal man had to repeat it 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 gesticulation he had imitated. End of number one branch line, The Signal Man, by Charles Dickens.