you believe that house to be haunted?"

"I do not," he answered. "I do not believe in ghosts, but I believe the
place has somehow got a bad name--perhaps through Helena's fancies, and
that people imagine it is haunted, and get frightened probably at sight
of their own shadows. Come, Miss Blake, I see a way out of this
difficulty; you go and take up your abode at River Hall for six months,
and at the end of that time the evil charm will be broken."

"And Helena dead," she observed.

"You need not take Helena with you."

"Nor anybody else, I suppose you mean," she remarked. "Thank you, Mr.
Craven; but though my life is none too happy, I should like to die a
natural death, and God only knows whether those who have been peeping
and spying about the place might not murder me in my bed, if I ever went
to bed in the house; that is--"

"Then, in a word, you do believe the place is haunted."

"I do nothing of the kind," she answered, angrily; "but though I have
courage enough, thank Heaven, I should not like to stay all alone in any
house, and I know there is not a servant in England would stay there
with me, unless she meant to take my life. But I tell you what, William
Craven, there are lots of poor creatures in the world even poorer than
we are--tutors and starved curates, and the like. Get one of them to
stay at the Hall till he finds out where the trick is, and I won't mind
saying he shall have fifty pounds down for his pains; that is, I mean,
of course, when he has discovered the secret of all these strange
lights, and suchlike."

And feeling she had by this proposition struck Mr. Craven under the
fifth rib, Miss Blake rose to depart.

"You will kindly think over what I have said," observed Mr. Craven.

"I'll do that if you will kindly think over what I have said," she
retorted, with the utmost composure; and then, after a curt
good-evening, she passed through the door I held open, nodding to me, as
though she would have remarked, "I'm more than a match for your master
still, young man."

"What a woman that is!" exclaimed Mr. Craven, as I resumed my seat.

"Do you think she really means what she says about the fifty pounds?"
I inquired.

"I do not know," he answered, "but I know I would cheerfully pay that
sum to anyone who could unravel the mystery of River Hall."

"Are you in earnest, sir?" I asked, in some surprise.

"Certainly I am," he replied.

"Then let me go and stay at River Hall," I said. "I will undertake to
run the ghost to earth for half the money."

7. MY OWN STORY

It is necessary now that I should tell the readers something about my
own antecedents.

Aware of how uninteresting the subject must prove, I shall make that
something as short as possible.

Already it will have been clearly understood, both from my own hints,
and from Miss Blake's far from reticent remarks on my position, that I
was a clerk at a salary in Mr. Craven's office.

But this had not always been the case. When I went first to Buckingham
Street, I was duly articled to Mr. Craven, and my mother and sister, who
were of aspiring dispositions, lamented that my choice of a profession
had fallen on law rather than soldiering.

They would have been proud of a young fellow in uniform; but they did
not feel at all elated at the idea of being so closely connected with a
"musty attorney."

As for my father, he told me to make my own choice, and found the money
to enable me to do so. He was an easy-going soul, who was in the
miserable position of having a sufficient income to live on without
exerting either mind or body; and yet whose income was insufficient to
enable him to have superior hobbies, or to gratify any particular taste.
We resided in the country, and belonged to the middle class of
comfortable, well-to-do English people. In our way, we were somewhat
exclusive as to our associates--and as the Hall and Castle residents
were, in their way, exclusive also, we lived almost out of society.

Indeed, we were very intimate with only one family in our neighbourhood;
and I think it was the example of the son of that house which first
induced me to think of leading a different existence from that in which
my father had grown as green and mossy as a felled tree.

Ned Munro, the eldest hope of a proud but reduced stock, elected to
study for the medical profession.

"The life here," he remarked, vaguely indicating the distant houses
occupied by our respective sires, "may suit the old folks, but it does
not suit me." And he went out into the wilderness of the world.

After his departure I found that the life at home did not suit me
either, and so I followed his lead, and went, duly articled, to Mr.
Craven, of Buckingham Street, Strand. Mr. Craven and my father were old
friends. To this hour I thank Heaven for giving my father such a friend.

After I had been for a considerable time with Mr. Craven, there came a
dreadful day, when tidings arrived that my father was ruined, and my
immediate presence required at home. What followed was that which is
usual enough in all such cases, with this difference--the loss of his
fortune killed my father.

From what I have seen since, I believe when he took to his bed and
quietly gave up living altogether, he did the wisest and best thing
possible under the circumstances. Dear, simple, kindly old man, I cannot
fancy how his feeble nature might have endured the years which followed;
filled by my mother and sister with lamentations, though we knew no
actual want--thanks to Mr. Craven.

My father had been dabbling in shares, and when the natural
consequence--ruin, utter ruin, came to our pretty country home, Mr.
Craven returned me the money paid to him, and offered me a salary.

Think of what this kindness was, and we penniless; while all the time
relations stood aloof, holding out nor hand nor purse, till they saw
whether we could weather the storm without their help.

Amongst those relations chanced to be a certain Admiral Patterson, an
uncle of my father. When we were well-to-do he had not disdained to
visit us in our quiet home, but when poverty came he tied up his
purse-strings and ignored our existence, till at length, hearing by a
mere chance that I was supporting my mother and sister by my own
exertions (always helped by Mr. Craven's goodness), he said, audibly,
that the "young jackanapes must have more in him than he thought," and
wrote to beg that I would spend my next holiday at his house.

I was anxious to accept the invitation, as a friend told me he felt
certain the old gentleman would forward my views; but I did not choose
to visit my relative in shabby clothes and with empty pockets;
therefore, it fell out that I jumped at Miss Blake's suggestion, and
closed with Mr. Craven's offer on the spot.

Half fifty--twenty-five--pounds would replenish my wardrobe, pay my
travelling expenses, and leave me with money in my pocket, as well.

I told Mr. Craven all this in a breath. When I had done so he
laughed, and said:

"You have worked hard, Patterson. Here is ten pounds. Go and see your
uncle; but leave River Hall alone."

Then, almost with tears, I entreated him not to baulk my purpose. If I
could rid River Hall of its ghost, I would take money from him, not
otherwise. I told him I had set my heart on unravelling the mystery
attached to that place, and I could have told him another mystery at the
same time, had shame not tied my tongue. I was in love--for the first
time in my life--hopelessly, senselessly, with a face of which I thought
all day and dreamed all night, that had made itself in a moment part and
parcel of my story, thus:

I had been at Kentish Town to see one of our clients, and having
finished my business, walked on as far as Camden Town, intending to take
an omnibus which might set me down somewhere near Chancery Lane.

Whilst standing at the top of College Street, under shelter of my
umbrella, a drizzling rain falling and rendering the pavement dirty and
slippery, I noticed a young lady waiting to cross the road--a young lady
with, to my mind, the sweetest, fairest, most lovable face on which my
eyes had ever rested. I could look at her without causing annoyance,
because she was so completely occupied in watching lumbering vans, fast
carts, crawling cabs, and various other vehicles, which chanced at that
moment to be crowding the thoroughfare, that she had no leisure to
bestow even a glance on any pedestrian.

A governess, I decided: for her dress, though neat, and even elegant,
was by no means costly; moreover, there was an expression of settled
melancholy about her features, and further, she carried a roll, which
looked like music, in her hand. In less time than it has taken me to
write this paragraph, I had settled all about her to my own
satisfaction.

Father bankrupt. Mother delicate. Young brothers and sisters, probably,
all crying aloud for the pittance she was able to earn by giving lessons
at so much an hour.

She had not been long at her present occupation, I felt satisfied,
for she was evidently unaccustomed to being out in the streets alone
on a wet day.

I would have offered to see her across the road, but for two reasons:
one, because I felt shy about proffering my services; the other, because
I was exceedingly doubtful whether I might not give offence by speaking.

After the fashion of so many of her sex, she made about half a dozen
false starts, advancing as some friendly cabby made signs for her to
venture the passage, retreating as she caught sight of some coming
vehicle still yards distant.

At last, imagining the way clear, she made a sudden rush, and had just
got well off the curb, when a mail phaeton turned the corner, and in one
second she was down in the middle of the road, and I struggling with the
horses and swearing at the driver, who, in his turn, very heartily
anathematized me.

I do not remember all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney
upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his
driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will
cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up
his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without having first gone
through the ceremony of asking whether the girl he had so nearly driven
over was living or dead.

Meantime she had been carried into the nearest shop, whither I
followed her.

I do not know why all the people standing about imagined me to be her
brother, but they certainly did so, and, under that impression, made way
for me to enter the parlour behind the shop, where I found my poor
beauty sitting, faint and frightened and draggled, whilst the woman of
the house was trying to wipe the mud off her dress, and endeavouring to
persuade her to swallow some wine-and-water.

As I entered, she lifted her eyes to mine, and said, "Thank you, sir.
I trust you have not got hurt yourself," so frankly and so sweetly
that the small amount of heart her face had left me passed into her
keeping at once.

"Are you much hurt?" I replied by asking.

"My arm is, a little," she answered. "If I could only get home! Oh! I
wish I were at home."

I went out and fetched a cab, and assisted her into it. Then I asked her
where the man should drive, and she gave me the name of the street which
Miss Blake, when in England, honoured by making her abode. Miss Blake's
number was 110. My charmer's number was 15. Having obtained this
information, I closed the cab-door, and taking my seat beside the
driver, we rattled off in the direction of Brunswick Square.

Arrived at the house, I helped her--when, in answer to my knock, an
elderly woman appeared, to ask my business--into the narrow hall of a
dreary house. Oh! how my heart ached when I beheld her surroundings! She
did not bid me good-bye; but asking me into the parlour, went, as I
understood, to get money to pay the cabman.

Seizing my opportunity, I told the woman, who still stood near the door,
that I was in a hurry, and leaving the house, bade the driver take me to
the top of Chancery Lane.

On the next Sunday I watched No. 15, till I beheld my lady-fair come
forth, veiled, furred, dressed all in her dainty best, prayer-book in
hand, going alone to St. Pancras Church--not the old, but the
new--whither I followed her.

By some freak of fortune, the verger put me into the same pew as that in
which he had just placed her.

When she saw me her face flushed crimson, and then she gave a little
smile of recognition.

I fear I did not much heed the service on that particular Sunday; but I
still felt shy, so shy that, after I had held the door open for her to
pass out, I allowed others to come between us, and did not dare to
follow and ask how she was.

During the course of the next week came Miss Blake and Mr. Craven's
remark about the fifty pounds; and within four-and-twenty hours
something still more astounding occurred--a visit from Miss Blake and
her niece, who wanted "a good talking-to"--so Miss Blake stated.

It was a dull, foggy day, and when my eyes rested on the younger lady, I
drew back closer into my accustomed corner, frightened and amazed.

"You were in such a passion yesterday," began Miss Blake, coming into
the office, dragging her blushing niece after her, "that you put it out
of my head to tell you three things--one, that we have moved from our
old lodgings; the next, that I have not a penny to go on with; and the
third, that Helena here has gone out of her mind. She won't have River
Hall let again, if you please. She intends to go out as a
governess--what do you think of that?--and nothing I can say makes any
impression upon her. I should have thought she had had enough of
governessing the first day she went out to give a lesson: she got
herself run over and nearly killed; was brought back in a cab by some
gentleman, who had the decency to take the cab away again: for how we
should have paid the fare, I don't know, I am sure. So I have just
brought her to you to know if her mother's old friend thinks it is a
right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale's daughter to put herself under the
feet of a parcel of ignorant, purse-proud snobs?"

Mr. Craven looked at the girl kindly. "My dear," he said, "I think, I
believe, there will be no necessity for you to do anything of that kind.
We have found a person--have we not, Patterson?--willing to devote
himself to solving the River Hall mystery. So, for the present at all
events, Helena--"

He paused, for Helena had risen from her seat and crossed the room to
where I sat.

"Aunt, aunt," she said, "this is the gentleman who stopped the horses,"
and before I could speak a word she held my hand in hers, and was
thanking me once again with her beautiful eyes.

Miss Blake turned and glared upon me. "Oh! it was you, was it?" she
said, ungraciously. "Well, it is just what I might have expected, and me
hoping all the time it was a lord or a baronet, at the least."

We all laughed--even Miss Elmsdale laughed at this frank
confession; but when the ladies were gone, Mr. Craven, looking at
me pityingly, remarked:

"This is a most unfortunate business, Patterson. I hope--I do hope, you
will not be so foolish as to fall in love with Miss Elmsdale."

To which I made no reply. The evil, if evil it were, was done. I had
fallen in love with Miss Blake's niece ere those words of wisdom dropped
from my employer's lips.

8. MY FIRST NIGHT AT RIVER HALL

It was with a feeling of depression for which I could in no way account
that, one cold evening, towards the end of February, I left Buckingham
Street and wended my way to the Uninhabited House. I had been eager to
engage in the enterprise; first, for the sake of the fifty pounds
reward; and secondly, and much more, for the sake of Helena Elmsdale. I
had tormented Mr. Craven until he gave a reluctant consent to my desire.
I had brooded over the matter until I became eager to commence my
investigations, as a young soldier may be to face the enemy; and yet,
when the evening came, and darkness with it; when I set my back to the
more crowded thoroughfares, and found myself plodding along a lonely
suburban road, with a keen wind lashing my face, and a suspicion of rain
at intervals wetting my cheeks, I confess I had no feeling of enjoyment
in my self-imposed task.

After all, talking about a haunted house in broad daylight to one's
fellow-clerks, in a large London office, is a very different thing from
taking up one's residence in the same house, all alone, on a bleak
winter's night, with never a soul within shouting distance. I had made
up my mind to go through with the matter, and no amount of mental
depression, no wintry blasts, no cheerless roads, no desolate goal,
should daunt me; but still I did not like the adventure, and at every
step I felt I liked it less.

Before leaving town I had fortified my inner man with a good dinner and
some excellent wine, but by the time I reached River Hall I might have
fasted for a week, so faint and spiritless did I feel.

"Come, this will never do," I thought, as I turned the key in the
door, and crossed the threshold of the Uninhabited House. "I must not
begin with being chicken-hearted, or I may as well give up the
investigation at once."

The fires I had caused to be kindled in the morning, though almost out
by the time I reached River Hall, had diffused a grateful warmth
throughout the house; and when I put a match to the paper and wood laid
ready in the grate of the room I meant to occupy, and lit the gas, in
the hall, on the landing, and in my sleeping-apartment, I began to think
things did not look so cheerless, after all.

The seals which, for precaution's sake, I had placed on the various
locks, remained intact. I looked to the fastenings of the hall-door,
examined the screws by which the bolts were attached to the wood, and
having satisfied myself that everything of that kind was secure, went
up to my room, where the fire was now crackling and blazing famously,
put the kettle on the hob, drew a chair up close to the hearth,
exchanged my boots for slippers, lit a pipe, pulled out my law-books,
and began to read.

How long I had read, I cannot say; the kettle on the hob was boiling, at
any rate, and the coals had burned themselves into a red-hot mass of
glowing cinders, when my attention was attracted--or rather, I should
say, distracted--by the sound of tapping outside the window-pane. First
I listened, and read on, then I laid down my book and listened more
attentively. It was exactly the noise which a person would make tapping
upon glass with one finger.

The wind had risen almost to a tempest, but, in the interval between
each blast, I could hear the tapping as distinctly as if it had been
inside my own skull--tap, tap, imperatively; tap, tap, tap, impatiently;
and when I rose to approach the casement, it seemed as if three more
fingers had joined in the summons, and were rapping for bare life.

"They have begun betimes," I thought; and taking my revolver in one
hand, with the other I opened the shutters, and put aside the blind.

As I did so, it seemed as if some dark body occupied one side of the
sash, while the tapping continued as madly as before.

It is as well to confess at once that I was for the moment frightened.
Subsequently I saw many wonderful sights, and had some terrible
experiences in the Uninhabited House; but I can honestly say, no sight
or experience so completely cowed me for the time being, as that dull
blackness to which I could assign no shape, that spirit-like rapping of
fleshless fingers, which seemed to increase in vehemence as I obeyed
its summons.

Doctors say it is not possible for the heart to stand still and a human
being live, and, as I am not a doctor, I do not like to contradict their
dogma, otherwise I could positively declare my heart did cease beating
as I listened, looking out into the night with the shadow of that
darkness projecting itself upon my mind, to the impatient tapping, which
was now distinctly audible even above the raging of the storm.

How I gathered sufficient courage to do it, I cannot tell; but I put my
face close to the glass, thus shutting out the gas and fire-light, and
saw that the dark object which alarmed me was a mass of ivy the wind had
detached from the wall, and that the invisible fingers were young
branches straying from the main body of the plant, which, tossed by the
air-king, kept striking the window incessantly, now one, now two, now
three, tap, tap, tap; tap, tap; tap, tap; and sometimes, after a long
silence, all together, tap-p-p, like the sound of clamming bells.

I stood for a minute or two, listening to the noise, so as to satisfy
myself as to its cause, then I laid down the revolver, took out my
pocket-knife, and opened the window. As I did so, a tremendous blast
swept into the room, extinguishing the gas, causing the glowing coals to
turn, for a moment, black on one side and to fiercest blaze on the
other, scattering the dust lying on the hearth over the carpet, and
dashing the ivy-sprays against my face with a force which caused my
cheeks to smart and tingle long afterwards.

Taking my revenge, I cut them as far back as I could, and then, without
closing the window, and keeping my breath as well as I could, I looked
out across the garden over the Thames, away to the opposite bank, where
a few lights glimmered at long intervals. "An eerie, lonely place for a
fellow to be in all by himself," I continued; "and yet, if the rest of
the ghosts, bodiless or clothed with flesh, which frequent this house
prove to be as readily laid as those ivy-twigs, I shall earn my
money--and--my--thanks, easily enough."

So considering, I relit the gas, replenished the fire, refilled my pipe,
reseated myself by the hearth, and with feet stretched out towards the
genial blaze, attempted to resume my reading.

All in vain: I could not fix my attention on the page; I could not
connect one sentence with another. When my mind ought to have
concentrated its energies upon Justice That, and Vice-Chancellor This,
and Lord Somebody Else, I felt it wandering away, trying to fit together
all the odds and ends of evidence worthy or unworthy concerning the
Uninhabited House. Which really was, as we had always stated, a good
house, a remarkably good house, well furnished, suitable in every
respect, &c.

Had I been a "family of respectability," or a gentleman of position,
with a large number of servants, a nice wife, and a few children
sprinkled about the domestic picture, I doubt not I should have enjoyed
the contemplation of that glowing fire, and rejoiced in the idea of
finding myself located in so desirable a residence, within an easy
distance of the West End; but, as matters stood, I felt anything rather
than elated.

In that large house there was no human inmate save myself, and I had an
attack of nervousness upon me for which I found it impossible to
account. Here was I, at length, under the very roof where my mistress
had passed all her childish days, bound to solve the mystery which was
making such havoc with her young life, permitted to essay a task, the
accomplishment of which should cover me with glory, and perhaps restore
peace and happiness to her heart; and yet I was _afraid_. I did not
hesitate to utter that word to my own soul then, any more than I
hesitate to write it now for those who list to read: for I can truly say
I think there are few men whose courage such an adventure would not try
were they to attempt it; and I am sure, had any one of those to whom I
tell this story been half as much afraid as I, he would have left River
Hall there and then, and allowed the ghosts said to be resident, to
haunt it undisturbed for evermore.

If I could only have kept memory from running here and there in quest of
evidence pro and con the house being haunted, I should have fared
better: but I could not do this.

Let me try as I would to give my attention to those legal studies that
ought to have engrossed my attention, I could not succeed in doing so:
my thoughts, without any volition on my part, kept continually on the
move; now with Miss Blake in Buckingham Street, again with Colonel
Morris on the river walk, once more with Miss Elmsdale in the library;
and went constantly flitting hither and thither, recalling the
experiences of a frightened lad, or the terror of an ignorant woman; yet
withal I had a feeling that in some way memory was playing me false, as
if, when ostentatiously bringing out all her stores for me to make or
mar as I could, she had really hidden away, in one of her remotest
corners, some link, great or little as the case might be, but still,
whether great or little, necessary to connect the unsatisfactory
narratives together.

Till late in the night I sat trying to piece my puzzle together, but
without success. There was a flaw in the story, a missing point in it,
somewhere, I felt certain. I often imagined I was about to touch it,
when, heigh! presto! it eluded my grasp.

"The whole affair will resolve itself into ivy-boughs," I finally,
if not truthfully, decided. "I am satisfied it is all--ivy," and I
went to bed.

Now, whether it was that I had thought too much of the ghostly
narratives associated with River Hall, the storminess of the night, the
fact of sleeping in a strange room, or the strength of a tumbler of
brandy-and-water, in which brandy took an undue lead, I cannot tell; but
during the morning hours I dreamed a dream which filled me with an
unspeakable horror, from which I awoke struggling for breath, bathed in
a cold perspiration, and with a dread upon me such as I never felt in
any waking moment of my life.

I dreamt I was lying asleep in the room I actually occupied, when I was
aroused from a profound slumber by the noise produced by some one
tapping at the window-pane. On rising to ascertain the cause of this
summons, I saw Colonel Morris standing outside and beckoning me to join
him. With that disregard of space, time, distance, and attire which
obtains in dreams, I at once stepped out into the garden. It was a
pitch-dark night, and bitterly cold, and I shivered, I know, as I heard
the sullen flow of the river, and listened to the moaning of the wind
among the trees.

We walked on for some minutes in silence, then my companion asked me if
I felt afraid, or if I would go on with him.

"I will go where you go," I answered.

Then suddenly he disappeared, and Playfire, who had been his counsel at
the time of the trial, took my hand and led me onwards.

We passed through a doorway, and, still in darkness, utter darkness,
began to descend some steps. We went down--down--hundreds of steps as it
seemed to me, and in my sleep, I still remembered the old idea of its
being unlucky to dream of going downstairs. But at length we came to the
bottom, and then began winding along interminable passages, now so
narrow only one could walk abreast, and again so low that we had to
stoop our heads in order to avoid striking the roof.

After we had been walking along these for hours, as time reckons in such
cases, we commenced ascending flight after flight of steep stone-steps.
I laboured after Playfire till my limbs ached and grew weary, till,
scarcely able to drag my feet from stair to stair, I entreated him to
stop; but he only laughed and held on his course the more rapidly, while
I, hurrying after, often stumbled and recovered myself, then stumbled
again and lay prone.

The night air blew cold and chill upon me as I crawled out into an
unaccustomed place and felt my way over heaps of uneven earth and
stones that obstructed my progress in every direction. I called out
for Playfire, but the wind alone answered me; I shouted for Colonel
Morris; I entreated some one to tell me where I was; and in answer
there was a dead and terrible silence. The wind died away; not a
breath of air disturbed the heavy stillness which had fallen so
suddenly around me. Instead of the veil of merciful blackness which
had hidden everything hitherto from view, a gray light spread slowly
over the objects around, revealing a burial-ground, with an old church
standing in the midst--a burial-ground where grew rank nettles and
coarse, tall grass; where brambles trailed over the graves, and weeds
and decay consorted with the dead.

Moved by some impulse which I could not resist, I still held on my
course, over mounds of earth, between rows of headstones, till I reached
the other side of the church, under the shadow of which yawned an open
pit. To the bottom of it I peered, and there beheld an empty coffin; the
lid was laid against the side of the grave, and on a headstone,
displaced from its upright position, sat the late occupant of the grave,
looking at me with wistful, eager eyes. A stream of light from within
the church fell across that one empty grave, that one dead watcher.

"So you have come at last," he said; and then the spell was broken, and
I would have fled, but that, holding me with his left hand, he pointed
with his right away to a shadowy distance, where the gray sky merged
into deepest black.

I strained my eyes to discover the object he strove to indicate, but I
failed to do so. I could just discern something flitting away into the
darkness, but I could give it no shape or substance.

"Look--look!" the dead man said, rising, in his excitement, and
clutching me more firmly with his clay-cold fingers.

I tried to fly, but I could not; my feet were chained to the spot. I
fought to rid myself of the clasp of the skeleton hand, and then we fell
together over the edge of the pit, and I awoke.

9. A TEMPORARY PEACE

It was scarcely light when I jumped out of bed, and murmuring, "Thank
God it was only a dream," dressed myself with all speed, and flinging
open the window, looked out on a calm morning after the previous
night's storm.

Muddily and angrily the Thames rolled onward to the sea. On the opposite
side of the river I could see stretches of green, with here and there a
house dotting the banks.

A fleet of barges lay waiting the turn of the tide to proceed to their
destination. The voices of the men shouting to each other, and
blaspheming for no particular reason, came quite clear and distinct
over the water. The garden was strewed with twigs and branches blown
off the trees during the night; amongst them the sprigs of ivy I had
myself cut off.

An hour and a scene not calculated to encourage superstitious fancies,
it may be, but still not likely to enliven any man's spirits--a quiet,
dull, gray, listless, dispiriting morning, and, being country-bred, I
felt its influence.

"I will walk into town, and ask Ned Munro to give me some breakfast," I
thought, and found comfort in the idea.

Ned Munro was a doctor, but not a struggling doctor. He was not rich,
but he "made enough for a beginner": so he said. He worked hard for
little pay; "but I mean some day to have high pay, and take the world
easy," he explained. He was blessed with great hopes and good courage;
he had high spirits, and a splendid constitution. He neither starved
himself nor his friends; his landlady "loved him as her son"; and
there were several good-looking girls who were very fond of him, not
as a brother.

But Ned had no notion of marrying, yet awhile. "Time enough for that,"
he told me once, "when I can furnish a good house, and set up a
brougham, and choose my patients, and have a few hundreds lying idle in
the bank."

Meantime, as no one of these items had yet been realized, he lived in
lodgings, ate toasted haddocks with his morning coffee, and smoked and
read novels far into the night.

Yes, I could go and breakfast with Munro. Just then it occurred to me
that the gas I had left lighted when I went to bed was out; that the
door I had left locked was open.

Straight downstairs I went. The gas in the hall was out, and every door
I had myself closed and locked the previous morning stood ajar, with the
seal, however, remaining intact.

I had borne as much as I could: my nerves were utterly unhinged.
Snatching my hat and coat, I left the house, and fled, rather than
walked, towards London.

With every step I took towards town came renewed courage; and when I
reached Ned's lodgings, I felt ashamed of my pusillanimity.

"I have been sleep-walking, that is what it is," I decided. "I have
opened the doors and turned off the gas myself, and been frightened at
the work of my own hands. I will ask Munro what is the best thing to
insure a quiet night."

Which I did accordingly, receiving for answer--

"Keep a quiet mind."

"Yes, but if one cannot keep a quiet mind; if one is anxious and
excited, and----"

"In love," he finished, as I hesitated.

"Well, no; I did not mean that," I said; "though, of course, that might
enter into the case also. Suppose one is uneasy about a certain amount
of money, for instance?"

"Are you?" he asked, ignoring the general suggestiveness of my remark.

"Well, yes; I want to make some if I can."

"Don't want, then," he advised. "Take my word for it, no amount of money
is worth the loss of a night's rest; and you have been tossing about all
night, I can see. Come, Patterson, if it's forgery or embezzlement, out
with it, man, and I will help you if I am able."

"If it were either one or the other, I should go to Mr. Craven," I
answered, laughing.

"Then it must be love," remarked my host; "and you will want to take me
into your confidence some day. The old story, I suppose: beautiful girl,
stern parents, wealthy suitor, poor lover. I wonder if we could interest
her in a case of small-pox. If she took it badly, you might have a
chance; but I have a presentiment that she has been vaccinated."

"Ned," was my protest, "I shall certainly fling a plate at your head."

"All right, if you think the exertion would do you good," he answered.
"Give me your hand, Patterson"; and before I knew what he wanted with
it, he had his fingers on my wrist.

"Look here, old fellow," he said; "you will be laid up, if you don't
take care of yourself. I thought so when you came in, and I am sure of
it now. What have you been doing?"

"Nothing wrong, Munro," I answered, smiling in spite of myself. "I have
not been picking, or stealing, or abducting any young woman, or courting
my neighbour's wife; but I am worried and perplexed. When I sleep I have
dreadful dreams--horrible dreams," I added, shuddering.

"Can you tell me what is worrying and perplexing you?" he asked, kindly,
after a moment's thought.

"Not yet, Ned," I answered; "though I expect I shall have to tell
you soon. Give me something to make me sleep quietly: that is all I
want now."

"Can't you go out of town?" he inquired.

"I do not want to go out of town," I answered.

"I will make you up something to strengthen your nerves," he said, after
a pause; "but if you are not better--well, before the end of the week,
take my advice, and run down to Brighton over Sunday. Now, you ought to
give me a guinea for that," he added, laughing. "I assure you, all the
gold-headed cane, all the wonderful chronometer doctors who pocket
thousands per annum at the West End, could make no more of your case
than I have done."

"I am sure they could not," I said, gratefully; "and when I have the
guinea to spare, be sure I shall not forget your fee."

Whether it was owing to his medicine, or his advice, or his cheery,
health-giving manner, I have no idea; but that night, when I walked
towards the Uninhabited House, I felt a different being.

On my way I called at a small corn-chandler's, and bought a quartern of
flour done up in a thin and utterly insufficient bag. I told the man the
wrapper would not bear its contents, and he said he could not help that.

I asked him if he had no stronger bags. He answered that he had, but he
could not afford to give them away.

I laid down twopence extra, and inquired if that would cover the expense
of a sheet of brown paper.

Ashamed, he turned aside and produced a substantial bag, into which he
put the flour in its envelope of curling-tissue.

I thanked him, and pushed the twopence across the counter. With a grunt,
he thrust the money back. I said good-night, leaving current coin of the
realm to the amount indicated behind me.

Through the night be shouted, "Hi! sir, you've forgotten your change."

Through the night I shouted back, "Give your next customer its value in
civility."

All of which did me good. Squabbling with flesh and blood is not a bad
preliminary to entering a ghost-haunted house.

Once again I was at River Hall. Looking up at its cheerless portal, I
was amazed at first to see the outside lamp flaring away in the
darkness. Then I remembered that all the other gas being out, of course
this, which I had not turned off, would blaze more brightly.

Purposely I had left my return till rather late. I had gone to one of
the theatres, and remained until a third through the principal piece.
Then I called at a supper-room, had half a dozen oysters and some stout;
after which, like a giant refreshed, I wended my way westward.

Utterly false would it be for me to say I liked the idea of entering the
Uninhabited House; but still, I meant to do it, and I did.

No law-books for me that night; no seductive fire; no shining lights all
over the house. Like a householder of twenty years' standing, I struck a
match, and turned the gas on to a single hall-lamp. I did not trouble
myself even about shutting the doors opening into the hall; I only
strewed flour copiously over the marble pavement, and on the first
flight of stairs, and then, by the servant's passages, crept into the
upper story, and so to bed.

That night I slept dreamlessly. I awoke in broad daylight, wondering why
I had not been called sooner, and then remembered there was no one to
call, and that if I required hot water, I must boil it for myself.

With that light heart which comes after a good night's rest, I put on
some part of my clothing, and was commencing to descend the principal
staircase, when my proceedings of the previous night flashed across my
mind; and pausing, I looked down into the hall. No sign of a foot on the
flour. The white powder lay there innocent of human pressure as the
untrodden snow; and yet, and yet, was I dreaming--could I have been
drunk without my own knowledge, before I went to bed? The gas was ablaze
in the hall and on the staircase, and every door left open over-night
was close shut.

Curiously enough, at that moment fear fell from me like a garment which
has served its turn, and in the strength of my manhood, I felt able to
face anything the Uninhabited House might have to show.

Over the latter part of that week, as being utterly unimportant in its
events or consequences, I pass rapidly, only saying that, when Saturday
came, I followed Munro's advice, and ran down to Brighton, under the
idea that by so doing I should thoroughly strengthen myself for the next
five days' ordeal. But the idea was a mistaken one. The Uninhabited
House took its ticket for Brighton by the same express; it got into the
compartment with me; it sat beside me at dinner; it hob-nobbed to me
over my own wine; uninvited it came out to walk with me; and when I
stood still, listening to the band, it stood still too. It went with me
to the pier, and when the wind blew, as the wind did, it said, "We were
quite as well off on the Thames."

When I woke, through the night, it seemed to shout, "Are you any better
off here?" And when I went to church the next day it crept close up to
me in the pew, and said, "Come, now, it is all very well to say you are
a Christian; but if you were really one you would not be afraid of the
place you and I wot of."

Finally, I was so goaded and maddened that I shook my fist at the sea,
and started off by the evening train for the Uninhabited House.

This time I travelled alone. The Uninhabited House preceded me.

There, in its old position, looking gloomy and mysterious in the
shadows of night, I found it on my return to town; and, as if tired of
playing tricks with one who had become indifferent to their vagaries,
all the doors remained precisely as I had left them; and if there were
ghosts in the house that night, they did not interfere with me or the
chamber I occupied.

Next morning, while I was dressing, a most remarkable thing occurred; a
thing for which I was in no wise prepared. Spirits, and sights and
sounds supposed appropriate to spirithood, I had expected; but for a
modest knock at the front door I was not prepared.

When, after hurriedly completing my toilet, I undrew the bolts and undid
the chain, and opened the door wide, there came rushing into the house a
keen easterly wind, behind which I beheld a sad-faced woman, dressed in
black, who dropped me a curtsey, and said:

"If you please, sir--I suppose you are the gentleman?"

Now, I could make nothing out of this, so I asked her to be good enough
to explain.

Then it all came out: "Did I want a person to char?"

This was remarkable--very. Her question amazed me to such an extent that
I had to ask her in, and request her to seat herself on one of the hall
chairs, and go upstairs myself, and think the matter over before I
answered her.

It had been so impressed upon me that no one in the neighbourhood would
come near River Hall, that I should as soon have thought of Victoria by
the grace of God paying me a friendly visit, as of being waited on by a
charwoman.

I went downstairs again.

At sight of me my new acquaintance rose from her seat, and began curling
up the corner of her apron.

"Do you know," I said, "that this house bears the reputation of
being haunted?"

"I have heard people say it is, sir," she answered.

"And do you know that servants will not stay in it--that tenants will
not occupy it?"

"I have heard so, sir," she answered once again.

"Then what do you mean by offering to come?" I inquired.

She looked up into my face, and I saw the tears come softly stealing
into her eyes, and her mouth began to pucker, ere, drooping her head,
she replied:

"Sir, just three months ago, come the twentieth, I was a happy woman. I
had a good husband and a tidy home. There was not a lady in the land I
would have changed places with. But that night, my man, coming home in a
fog, fell into the river and was drowned. It was a week before they
found him, and all the time--while I had been hoping to hear his step
every minute in the day--I was a widow."

"Poor soul!" I said, involuntarily.

"Well, sir, when a man goes, all goes. I have done my best, but still I
have not been able to feed my children--his children--properly, and the
sight of their poor pinched faces breaks my heart, it do, sir," and she
burst out sobbing.

"And so, I suppose," I remarked, "you thought you would face this house
rather than poverty?"

"Yes, sir. I heard the neighbours talking about this place, and you,
sir, and I made up my mind to come and ask if I mightn't tidy up things
a bit for you, sir. I was a servant, sir, before I married, and I'd be
so thankful."

Well, to cut the affair shorter for the reader than I was able to do for
myself, I gave her half a crown, and told her I would think over her
proposal, and let her hear from me--which I did. I told her she might
come for a couple of hours each morning, and a couple each evening, and
she could bring one of the children with her if she thought she was
likely to find the place lonely.

I would not let her come in the day-time, because, in the quest I
had set myself, it was needful I should feel assured no person could
have an opportunity of elaborating any scheme for frightening me, on
the premises.

"Real ghosts," said I to Mr. Craven, "I do not mind; but the physical
agencies which may produce ghosts, I would rather avoid." Acting on
which principle I always remained in the house while Mrs. Stott--my
charwoman was so named--cleaned, and cooked, and boiled, and put
things straight.

No one can imagine what a revolution this woman effected in my ways and
habits, and in the ways and habits of the Uninhabited House.

Tradesmen called for orders. The butcher's boy came whistling down the
lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for
dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took
solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the
superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter,
and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of
its produce; the milkman's yahoo sounded cheerfully in the morning
hours; and the letter-box was filled with cards from all sorts and
descriptions of people--from laundresses to wine merchants, from
gardeners to undertakers.

The doors now never shut nor opened of their own accord. A great peace
seemed to have settled over River Hall.

It was all too peaceful, in fact. I had gone to the place to hunt a
ghost, and not even the ghost of a ghost seemed inclined to reveal
itself to me.

10. THE WATCHER IS WATCHED

I have never been able exactly to satisfy my own mind as to the precise
period during my occupation of the Uninhabited House when it occurred to
me that I was being watched. Hazily I must have had some consciousness
of the fact long before I began seriously to entertain the idea.

I felt, even when I was walking through London, that I was being often
kept in sight by some person. I had that vague notion of a stranger
being interested in my movements which it is so impossible to define to
a friend, and which one is chary of seriously discussing with oneself.
Frequently, when the corner of a street was reached, I found myself
involuntarily turning to look back; and, prompted by instinct, I
suppose, for there was no reason about the matter, I varied my route to
and from the Uninhabited House, as much as the nature of the roads
permitted. Further, I ceased to be punctual as to my hours of business,
sometimes arriving at the office late, and, if Mr. Craven had anything
for me to do Cityward, returning direct from thence to River Hall
without touching Buckingham Street.

By this time February had drawn to a close, and better weather might
therefore have been expected; instead of which, one evening as I paced
westward, snow began to fall, and continued coming down till somewhere
about midnight.

Next morning Mrs. Stott drew my attention to certain footmarks on the
walks, and beneath the library and drawing-room windows--the footmarks,
evidently, of a man whose feet were not a pair. With the keenest
interest, I examined these traces of a human pursuer. Clearly the
footprints had been made by only one person, and that person deformed in
some way. Not merely was the right foot-track different from that of the
left, but the way in which its owner put it to the ground must have been
different also. The one mark was clear and distinct, cut out in the snow
with a firm tread, while the other left a little broken bank at its
right edge, and scarcely any impression of the heel.

"Slightly lame," I decided. "Eases his right foot, and has his boots
made to order."

"It is very odd," I remarked aloud to Mrs. Stott.

"That it is, sir," she answered; adding, "I hope to gracious none of
them mobsmen are going to come burglaring here!" "Pooh!" I replied;
"there is nothing for them to steal, except chairs and tables, and I
don't think one man could carry many of them away."

The whole of that day I found my thoughts reverting to those foot-marks
in the snow. What purpose anyone proposed to serve by prowling about
River Hall I could not imagine. Before taking up my residence in the
Uninhabited House, I had a theory that some malicious person or persons
was trying to keep the place unoccupied--nay, further, imagination
suggested the idea that, owing to its proximity to the river, Mr.
Elmsdale's Hall might have taken the fancy of a gang of smugglers, who
had provided for themselves means of ingress and egress unknown to the
outside world. But all notions of this kind now seemed preposterous.

Slowly, but surely, the conviction had been gaining upon me that, let
the mystery of River Hall be what it would, no ordinary explanation
could account for the phenomena which it had presented to tenant after
tenant; and my own experiences in the house, slight though they were,
tended to satisfy me there was something beyond malice or interest at
work about the place.

The very peace vouchsafed to me seemed another element of mystery, since
it would certainly have been natural for any evil-disposed person to
inaugurate a series of ghostly spectacles for the benefit of an
investigator like myself; and yet, somehow, the absence of supernatural
appearances, and the presence of that shadowy human being who thought it
worth while to track my movements, and who had at last left tangible
proof of his reality behind him in the snow, linked themselves together
in my mind.

"If there is really anyone watching me," I finally decided, "there must
be a deeper mystery attached to River Hall than has yet been suspected.
Now, the first thing is to make sure that some one is watching me, and
the next to guard against danger from him."

In the course of the day, I made a, for me, curious purchase. In a
little shop, situated in a back street, I bought half a dozen reels of
black sewing-cotton.

This cotton, on my return home, I attached to the trellis-work outside
the drawing-room window, and wound across the walk and round such trees
and shrubs as grew in positions convenient for my purpose.

"If these threads are broken to-morrow morning, I shall know I have a
flesh-and-blood foe to encounter," I thought.

Next morning I found all the threads fastened across the walks leading
round by the library and drawing-room snapped in two.

It was, then, flesh and blood I had come out to fight, and I decided
that night to keep watch.

As usual, I went up to my bedroom, and, after keeping the gas burning
for about the time I ordinarily spent in undressing, put out the light,
softly turned the handle of the door, stole, still silently, along the
passage, and so into a large apartment with windows which overlooked
both the library and drawing-room.

It was here, I knew, that Miss Elmsdale must have heard her father
walking past the door, and I am obliged to confess that, as I stepped
across the room, a nervous chill seemed for the moment to take my
courage captive.

If any reader will consider the matter, mine was not an enviable
position. Alone in a desolate house, reputed to be haunted, watching
for some one who had sufficient interest in the place to watch it and
me closely.

It was still early--not later than half-past ten. I had concluded to
keep my vigil until after midnight, and tried to while away the time
with thoughts foreign to the matter in hand.

All in vain, however. Let me force what subject I pleased upon my
mind, it reverted persistently to Mr. Elmsdale and the circumstances
of his death.

"Why did he commit suicide?" I speculated. "If he had lost money, was
that any reason why he should shoot himself?"

People had done so, I was aware; and people, probably, would continue to
do so; but not hard-headed, hard-hearted men, such as Robert Elmsdale
was reputed to have been. He was not so old that the achievement of a
second success should have seemed impossible. His credit was good, his
actual position unsuspected. River Hall, unhaunted, was not a bad
property, and in those days he could have sold it advantageously.

I could not understand the motive of his suicide, unless, indeed, he was
mad or drunk at the time. And then I began to wonder whether anything
about his life had come out on the inquest--anything concerning habits,
associates, and connections. Had there been any other undercurrent,
besides betting, in his life brought out in evidence, which might help
me to a solution of the mystery?

"I will ask Mr. Craven to-morrow," I thought, "whether he has a copy of
the _Times_, containing a report of the inquest. Perhaps--"

What possibility I was about to suggest to my own mind I shall never now
know, for at that moment there flamed out upon the garden a broad,
strong flame of light--a flame which came so swiftly and suddenly, that
a man, creeping along the River Walk, had not time to step out of its
influence before I had caught full sight of him. There was not much to
see, however. A man about the middle height, muffled in a cloak, wearing
a cap, the peak of which was drawn down over his forehead: that was all
I could discern, ere, cowering back from the light, he stole away into
the darkness.

Had I yielded to my first impulse, I should have rushed after him in
pursuit; but an instant's reflection told me how worse than futile such
a wild-goose chase must prove. Cunning must be met with cunning,
watching with watching.

If I could discover who he was, I should have taken the first step
towards solving the mystery of River Hall; but I should never do so by
putting him on his guard. The immediate business lying at that moment to
my hand was to discover whence came the flare of light which, streaming
across the walk, had revealed the intruder's presence to me. For that
business I can truthfully say I felt little inclination.

Nevertheless, it had to be undertaken. So, walking downstairs, I
unlocked and opened the library-door, and found, as I anticipated, the
room in utter darkness. I examined the fastenings of the shutters--they
were secure as I had left them; I looked into the strong-room--not even
a rat lay concealed there; I turned the cocks of the gas lights--but no
gas whistled through the pipes, for the service to the library was
separate from that of the rest of the house, and capable of being shut
off at pleasure. I, mindful of the lights said to have been seen
emanating from that room, had taken away the key from the internal tap,
so that gas could not be used without my knowledge or the possession of
a second key. Therefore, as I have said, it was no surprise to me to
find the library in darkness. Nor could I say the fact of the light
flaring, apparently, from a closely-shut-up room surprised me either.
For a long time I had been expecting to see this phenomenon: now, when I
did see it, I involuntarily connected the light, the apartment, and the
stranger together.

For he was no ghost. Ghosts do not leave footmarks behind them in the
snow. Ghosts do not break threads of cotton. It was a man I had seen in
the garden, and it was my business to trace out the connection between
him and the appearances at River Hall.

Thinking thus, I left the library, extinguished the candle by the aid of
which I had made the investigations stated above, and after lowering the
gaslight I always kept burning in the hall, began ascending the broad,
handsome staircase, when I was met by the figure of a man descending the
steps. I say advisedly, the figure; because, to all external appearance,
he was as much a living man as myself.

And yet I knew the thing which came towards me was not flesh and
blood. Knew it when I stood still, too much stupefied to feel afraid.
Knew it, as the figure descended swiftly, noiselessly. Knew it, as,
for one instant, we were side by side. Knew it, when I put out my hand
to stop its progress, and my hand, encountering nothing, passed
through the phantom as through air. Knew, it, when I saw the figure
pass through the door I had just locked, and which opened to admit the
ghostly visitor--opened wide, and then closed again, without the help
of mortal hand.

After that I knew nothing more till I came to my senses again and found
myself half lying, half sitting on the staircase, with my head resting
against the banisters. I had fainted; but if any man thinks I saw in a
vision what I have described, let him wait till he reaches the end of
this story before expressing too positive an opinion about the matter.

How I passed the remainder of that night, I could scarcely tell.
Towards morning, however, I fell asleep, and it was quite late when I
awoke: so late, in fact, that Mrs. Stott had rung for admittance
before I was out of bed.

That morning two curious things occurred: one, the postman brought a
letter for the late owner of River Hall, and dropped it in the box;
another, Mrs. Stott asked me if I would allow her and two of the
children to take up their residence at the Uninhabited House. She
could not manage to pay her rent, she explained, and some kind
friends had offered to maintain the elder children if she could keep
the two youngest.

"And I thought, sir, seeing how many spare rooms there are here, and the
furniture wanting cleaning, and the windows opening when the sun is out,
that perhaps you would not object to my staying here altogether. I
should not want any more wages, sir, and I would do my best to give
satisfaction."

For about five minutes I considered this proposition, made to me whilst
sitting at breakfast, and decided in favour of granting her request. I
felt satisfied she was not in league with the person or persons engaged
in watching my movements; it would be well to have some one in care of
the premises during my absence, and it would clearly be to her interest
to keep her place at River Hall, if possible.

Accordingly, when she brought in my boots, I told her she could remove
at once if she liked.

"Only remember one thing, Mrs. Stott," I said. "If you find any ghosts
in the dark corners, you must not come to me with any complaints."

"I sleep sound, sir," she answered, "and I don't think any ghosts will
trouble me in the daytime. So thank you, sir; I will bring over a few
things and stay here, if you please."

"Very good; here is the key of the back door," I answered; and in five
minutes more I was trudging Londonward.

As I walked along I decided not to say anything to Mr. Craven concerning
the previous night's adventures; first, because I felt reluctant to
mention the apparition, and secondly, because instinct told me I should
do better to keep my own counsel, and confide in no one, till I had
obtained some clue to the mystery of that midnight watcher.

"Now here's a very curious thing!" said Mr. Craven, after he had opened
and read the letter left at River Hall that morning. "This is from a man
who has evidently not heard of Mr. Elmsdale's death, and who writes to
say how much he regrets having been obliged to leave England without
paying his I O U held by my client. To show that, though he may have
seemed dishonest, he never meant to cheat Mr. Elmsdale, he encloses a
draft on London for the principal and interest of the amount due."

"Very creditable to him," I remarked. "What is the amount, sir?"

"Oh! the total is under a hundred pounds," answered Mr. Craven; "but
what I meant by saying the affair seemed curious is this: amongst Mr.
Elmsdale's papers there was not an I O U of any description."

"Well, that is singular," I observed; then asked, "Do you think Mr.
Elmsdale had any other office besides the library at River Hall?"

"No," was the reply, "none whatever. When he gave up his offices in
town, he moved every one of his papers to River Hall. He was a reserved,
but not a secret man; not a man, for instance, at all likely to lead a
double life of any sort."

"And yet he betted," I suggested.

"Certainly that does puzzle me," said Mr. Craven. "And it is all against
my statement, for I am certain no human being, unless it might be Mr.
Harringford, who knew him in business, was aware of the fact."

"And what is your theory about the absence of all-important documents?"
I inquired.

"I think he must have raised money on them," answered Mr. Craven.

"Are you aware whether anyone else ever produced them?" I asked.

"I am not; I never heard of their being produced: but, then, I should
not have been likely to hear." Which was very true, but very
unsatisfactory. Could we succeed in tracing even one of those papers, a
clue might be found to the mystery of Mr. Elmsdale's suicide.

That afternoon I repaired to the house of one of our clients, who had, I
knew, a file of the _Times_ newspapers, and asked him to allow me to
look at it.

I could, of course, have seen a file at many places in the city, but I
preferred pursuing my investigations where no one was likely to watch
the proceeding.

"_Times!_ bless my soul, yes; only too happy to be able to oblige Mr.
Craven. Walk into the study, there is a good fire, make yourself quite
at home, I beg, and let me send you a glass of wine."

All of which I did, greatly to the satisfaction of the dear old
gentleman.

Turning over the file for the especial year in which Mr. Elmsdale had
elected to put a pistol to his head, I found at last the account of the
inquest, which I copied out in shorthand, to be able to digest it more
fully at leisure; and as it was growing dusk, wended my way back to
Buckingham Street.

As I was walking slowly down one side of the street, I noticed a man
standing within the open door of a house near Buckingham Gate.

At any other time I should not have given the fact a second thought, but
life at River Hall seemed to have endowed me with the power of making
mountains out of molehills, of regarding the commonest actions of my
fellows with distrust and suspicion; and I was determined to know more
of the gentleman who stood back in the shadow, peering out into the
darkening twilight.

With this object I ran upstairs to the clerk's office, and then passed
into Mr. Craven's room. He had gone, but his lamp was still burning, and
I took care to move between it and the window, so as to show myself to
any person who might be watching outside; then, without removing hat or
top-coat, I left the room, and proceeded to Taylor's office, which I
found in utter darkness. This was what I wanted; I wished to see without
being seen; and across the way, standing now on the pavement, was the
man I had noticed, looking up at our offices.

"All right," thought I, and running downstairs, I went out again, and
walked steadily up Buckingham Street, along John Street, up Adam Street,
as though _en route_ to the Strand. Before, however, I reached that
thoroughfare, I paused, hesitated, and then immediately and suddenly
wheeled round and retraced my steps, meeting, as I did so, a man walking
a few yards behind me and at about the same pace.

I did not slacken my speed for a moment as we came face to face; I did
not turn to look back after him; I retraced my steps to the office;
affected to look out some paper, and once again pursued my former route,
this time without meeting or being followed by anyone, and made my way
into the City, where I really had business to transact.

I could have wished for a longer and a better look at the man who
honoured me so far as to feel interested in my movements; but I did not
wish to arouse his suspicions.

I had scored one trick; I had met him full, and seen his face
distinctly--so distinctly that I was able to feel certain I had seen it
before, but where, at the moment, I could not remember.

"Never mind," I continued: "that memory will come in due time; meanwhile
the ground of inquiry narrows, and the plot begins to thicken."

11. MISS BLAKE ONCE MORE

Upon my return to River Hall I found in the letter-box an envelope
addressed to ---- Patterson, Esq.

Thinking it probably contained some circular, I did not break the seal
until after dinner; whereas, had I only known from whom the note came,
should I not have devoured its contents before satisfying the pangs of
physical hunger!

Thus ran the epistle:--

    "DEAR SIR,--

    "Until half an hour ago I was ignorant that you were the person who
    had undertaken to reside at River Hall. If you would add another
    obligation to that already conferred upon me, _leave that terrible
    house at once_. What I have seen in it, you know; what may happen to
    you, if you persist in remaining there, I tremble to think. For the
    sake of your widowed mother and only sister, you ought not to expose
    yourself to a risk which is _worse than useless_. I never wish to
    hear of River Hall being let again. Immediately I come of age, I
    shall sell the place; and if anything could give me happiness in
    this world, it would be to hear the house was razed to the ground.
    Pray! pray! listen to a warning, which, believe me, is not idly
    given, and leave a place which has already been the cause of so much
    misery to yours, gratefully and sincerely,

    "HELENA ELMSDALE."

It is no part of this story to tell the rapture with which I gazed upon
the writing of my "lady-love." Once I had heard Miss Blake remark, when
Mr. Craven was remonstrating with her on her hieroglyphics, that "Halana
wrote an 'unmaning hand,' like all the rest of the English," and, to
tell the truth, there was nothing particularly original or
characteristic about Miss Elmsdale's calligraphy.

But what did that signify to me? If she had strung pearls together, I
should not have valued them one-half so much as I did the dear words
which revealed her interest in me.

Over and over I read the note, at first rapturously, afterwards with a
second feeling mingling with my joy. How did she know it was I who had
taken up my residence at River Hall? Not a soul I knew in London,
besides Mr. Craven, was aware of the fact, and he had promised
faithfully to keep my secret.

Where, then, had Miss Elmsdale obtained her information? from whom
had she learned that I was bent on solving the mystery of the
"Uninhabited House"?

I puzzled myself over these questions till my brain grew uneasy with
vain conjectures.

Let me imagine what I would--let me force my thoughts into what grooves
I might--the moment the mental pressure was removed, my suspicions
fluttered back to the man whose face seemed not unfamiliar.

"I am confident he wants to keep that house vacant," I decided. "Once
let me discover who he is, and the mystery of the 'Uninhabited House'
shall not long remain a mystery."

But then the trouble chanced to be how to find out who he was. I could
not watch and be watched at the same time, and I did not wish to take
anyone into my confidence, least of all a professional detective.

So far fortune had stood my friend; I had learnt something suspected by
no one else, and I made up my mind to trust to the chapter of accidents
for further information on the subject of my unknown friend.

When Mr. Craven and I were seated at our respective tables, I
said to him:

"Could you make any excuse to send me to Miss Blake's to-day, sir?"

Mr. Craven looked up in utter amazement. "To Miss Blake's!" he repeated.
"Why do you want to go there?"

"I want to see Miss Elmsdale," I answered, quietly enough, though I felt
the colour rising in my face as I spoke.

"You had better put all that nonsense on one side, Patterson," he
remarked. "What you have to do is to make your way in the world, and you
will not do that so long as your head is running upon pretty girls.
Helena Elmsdale is a good girl; but she would no more be a suitable wife
for you, than you would be a suitable husband for her. Stick to law, my
lad, for the present, and leave love for those who have nothing more
important to think of."

"I did not want to see Miss Elmsdale for the purpose you imply," I said,
smiling at the vehemence of Mr. Craven's advice. "I only wish to ask her
one question."

"What is the question?"

"From whom she learned that I was in residence at River Hall," I
answered, after a moment's hesitation.

"What makes you think she is aware of that fact?" he inquired.

"I received a note from her last night, entreating me to leave the
place, and intimating that some vague peril menaced me if I persisted in
remaining there."

"Poor child! poor Helena!" said Mr. Craven, thoughtfully; then spreading
a sheet of note-paper on his blotting-pad, and drawing his cheque-book
towards him, he proceeded:

"Now remember, Patterson, I trust to your honour implicitly. You must
not make love to that girl; I think a man can scarcely act more
dishonourably towards a woman, than to induce her to enter into what
must be, under the best circumstances, a very long engagement."

"You may trust me, sir," I answered, earnestly. "Not," I added, "that I
think it would be a very easy matter to make love to anyone with Miss
Blake sitting by."

Mr. Craven laughed; he could not help doing so at the idea I had
suggested. Then he said, "I had a letter from Miss Blake this morning
asking me for money."

"And you are going to let her have some of that hundred pounds you
intended yesterday to place against her indebtedness to you," I
suggested.

"That is so," he replied. "Of course, when Miss Helena comes of age, we
must turn over a new leaf--we really must."

To this I made no reply. It would be a most extraordinary leaf, I
considered, in which Miss Blake did not appear as debtor to my
employer but it scarcely fell within my province to influence Mr.
Craven's actions.

"You had better ask Miss Blake to acknowledge receipt of this," said my
principal, holding up a cheque for ten pounds as he spoke. "I am afraid
I have not kept the account as I ought to have done."

Which was undeniably true, seeing we had never taken a receipt from
her at all, and that loans had been debited to his private account
instead of to that of Miss Blake. But true as it was, I only answered
that I would get her acknowledgment; and taking my hat, I walked off
to Hunter Street.

Arrived there, I found, to my unspeakable joy, that Miss Blake was out,
and Miss Elmsdale at home.

When I entered the shabby sitting-room where her beauty was so
grievously lodged, she rose and greeted me with kindly words, and sweet
smiles, and vivid blushes.

"You have come to tell me you are not going ever again to that dreadful
house," she said, after the first greeting and inquiries for Miss Blake
were over. "You cannot tell the horror with which the mere mention of
River Hall now fills me."

"I hope it will never be mentioned to you again till I have solved the
mystery attached to it," I answered.

"Then you will not do what I ask," she cried, almost despairingly.

"I cannot," was my reply. "Miss Elmsdale, you would not have a soldier
turn back from the battle. I have undertaken to find out the secret
attached to your old home, and, please God, I shall succeed in my
endeavours."

"But you are exposing yourself to danger, to--"

"I must take my chance of that. I cannot, if I would, turn back now, and
I would not if I could. But I have come to you for information. How did
you know it was I who had gone to River Hall?"

The colour flamed up in her face as I put the question.

"I--I was told so," she stammered out.

"May I ask by whom?"

"No, Mr. Patterson, you may not," she replied. "A--a friend--a kind
friend, informed me of the fact, and spoke of the perils to which you
were exposing yourself--living there all alone--all alone," she
repeated. "I would not pass a night in the house again if the whole
parish were there to keep me company, and what must it be to stay in
that terrible, terrible place alone! You are here, perhaps, because you
do not believe--because you have not seen."

"I do believe," I interrupted, "because I have seen; and yet I mean to
go through with the matter to the end. Have you a likeness of your
father in your possession, Miss Elmsdale?" I asked.

"I have a miniature copied from his portrait, which was of course
too large to carry from place to place," she answered. "Why do you
wish to know?"

"If you let me see it, I will reply to your question," I said.

Round her dear throat she wore a thin gold chain. Unfastening this, she
handed to me the necklet, to which was attached a locket enamelled in
black. It is no exaggeration to say, as I took this piece of personal
property, my hand trembled so much that I could not open the case.

True love is always bashful, and I loved the girl, whose slender
neck the chain had caressed, so madly and senselessly, if you will,
that I felt as if the trinket were a living thing, a part and parcel
of herself.

"Let me unfasten it," she said, unconscious that aught save awkwardness
affected my manipulation of the spring. And she took the locket and
handed it back to me open, wet with tears--her tears.

Judge how hard it was for me then to keep my promise to Mr. Craven and
myself--how hard it was to refrain from telling her all my reasons for
having ever undertaken to fight the dragon installed at River Hall.

I thank God I did refrain. Had I spoken then, had I presumed upon her
sorrow and her simplicity, I should have lost something which
constitutes the sweetest memory of my life.

But that is in the future of this story, and meantime I was looking at
the face of her father.

I looked at it long and earnestly; then I closed the locket, softly
pressing down the spring as I did so, and gave back miniature and chain
into her hand.

"Well, Mr. Patterson?" she said, inquiringly.

"Can you bear what I have to tell?" I asked.

"I can, whatever it may be," she answered.

"I have seen that face at River Hall."

She threw up her arms with a gesture of despair.

"And," I went on, "I may be wrong, but I think I am destined to solve
the mystery of its appearance."

She covered her eyes, and there was silence between us for a minute,
when I said:

"Can you give me the name of the person who told you I was at
River Hall?"

"I cannot," she repeated. "I promised not to mention it."

"He said I was in danger."

"Yes, living there all alone."

"And he wished you to warn me."

"No; he asked my aunt to do so, and she refused; and so I--I thought I
would write to you without mentioning the matter to her."

"You have done me an incalculable service," I remarked, "and in return I
will tell you something."

"What is that?" she asked.

"From to-night I shall not be alone in the house."

"Oh! how thankful I am!" she exclaimed; then instantly added, "Here
is my aunt."

I rose as Miss Blake entered, and bowed.

"Oh! it is you, is it?" said the lady. "The girl told me some one
was waiting."

Hot and swift ran the colour to my adored one's cheeks.

"Aunt," she observed, "I think you forget this gentleman comes from
Mr. Craven."

"Oh, no! my dear, I don't forget Mr. Craven, or his clerks either,"
responded Miss Blake, as, still cloaked and bonneted, she tore open Mr.
Craven's envelope.

"I am to take back an answer, I think," said I.

"You are, I see," she answered. "He's getting mighty particular, is
William Craven. I suppose he thinks I am going to cheat him out of his
paltry ten pounds. Ten pounds, indeed! and what is that, I should like
to know, to us in our present straits! Why, I had more than twice ten
yesterday from a man on whom we have no claim--none whatever--who,
without asking, offered it in our need."

"Aunt," said Miss Elmsdale, warningly.

"If you will kindly give me your acknowledgment, Miss Blake, I should
like to be getting back to Buckingham Street," I said. "Mr. Craven will
wonder at my absence."

"Not a bit of it," retorted Miss Blake. "You and Mr. Craven understand
each other, or I am very much mistaken; but here is the receipt, and
good day to you."

I should have merely bowed my farewell, but that Miss Elmsdale stood up
valiantly.

"Good-bye, Mr. Patterson," she said, holding out her dainty hand, and
letting it lie in mine while she spoke. "I am very much obliged to you.
I can never forget what you have done and dared in our interests."

And I went out of the room, and descended the stairs, and opened the
front door, she looking graciously over the balusters the while, happy,
ay, and more than happy.

What would I not have done and dared at that moment for Helena Elmsdale?
Ah! ye lovers, answer!

12. HELP

"There has been a gentleman to look at the house, sir, this afternoon,"
said Mrs. Stott to me, when, wet and tired, I arrived, a few evenings
after my interview with Miss Elmsdale, at River Hall.

"To look at the house!" I repeated. "Why, it is not to let."

"I know that, sir, but he brought an order from Mr. Craven's office to
allow him to see over the place, and to show him all about. For a widow
lady from the country, he said he wanted it. A very nice gentleman, sir;
only he did ask a lot of questions, surely--"

"What sort of questions?" I inquired.

"Oh! as to why the tenants did not stop here, and if I thought there was
anything queer about the place; and he asked how you liked it, and how
long you were going to stay; and if you had ever seen aught strange in
the house.

"He spoke about you, sir, as if he knew you quite well, and said you
must be stout-hearted to come and fight the ghosts all by yourself. A
mighty civil, talkative gentleman--asked me if I felt afraid of living
here, and whether I had ever met any spirits walking about the stairs
and passages by themselves."

"Did he leave the order you spoke of just now behind him?"

"Yes, sir. He wanted me to give it back to him; but I said I must keep
it for you to see. So then he laughed, and made the remark that he
supposed, if he brought the lady to see the place, I would let him in
again. A pleasant-spoken gentleman, sir--gave me a shilling, though I
told him I did not require it."

Meantime I was reading the order, written by Taylor, and dated two
years back.

"What sort of looking man was he?" I asked.

"Well, sir, there was not anything particular about him in any way.
Not a tall gentleman, not near so tall as you, sir; getting into
years, but still very active and light-footed, though with something
of a halt in his way of walking. I could not rightly make out what it
was; nor what it was that caused him to look a little crooked when you
saw him from behind.

"Very lean, sir; looked as if the dinners he had eaten done him no good.
Seemed as if, for all his pleasant ways, he must have seen trouble, his
face was so worn-like."

"Did he say if he thought the house would suit?" I inquired.

"He said it was a very nice house, sir, and that he imagined anybody not
afraid of ghosts might spend two thousand a year in it very comfortably.
He said he should bring the lady to see the place, and asked me
particularly if I was always at hand, in case he should come tolerably
early in the morning."

"Oh!" was my comment, and I walked into the dining-room, wondering what
the meaning of this new move might be; for Mrs. Stott had described, to
the best of her ability, the man who stood watching our offices in
London; and--good heavens!--yes, the man I had encountered in the lane
leading to River Hall, when I went to the Uninhabited House, after
Colonel Morris' departure.

"That is the man," thought I, "and he has some close, and deep, and
secret interest in the mystery associated with this place, the origin of
which I must discover."

Having arrived at this conclusion, I went to bed, for I had caught a bad
cold, and was aching from head to foot, and had been sleeping ill, and
hoped to secure a good night's rest.

I slept, it is true, but as for rest, I might as well, or better, have
been awake. I fell from one dream into another; found myself wandering
through impossible places; started in an agony of fear, and then dozed
again, only to plunge into some deeper quagmire of trouble; and through
all there was a vague feeling I was pursuing a person who eluded all my
efforts to find him; playing a terrible game of hide-and-seek with a man
who always slipped away from my touch, panting up mountains and running
down declivities after one who had better wind and faster legs than I;
peering out into the darkness, to catch a sight of a vague figure
standing somewhere in the shadow, and looking, with the sun streaming
into my eyes and blinding me, adown long white roads filled with a
multitude of people, straining my sight to catch a sight of the coming
traveller, who yet never came.

When I awoke thoroughly, as I did long and long before daybreak, I knew
I was ill. I had a bad sore throat and an oppression at my chest which
made me feel as if I was breathing through a sponge. My limbs ached more
than had been the case on the previous evening whilst my head felt
heavier than a log of teak.

"What should I do if I were to have a bad illness in that house?" I
wondered to myself, and for a few minutes I pondered over the expediency
of returning home; but this idea was soon set aside.

Where could I go that the Uninhabited House would not be a haunting
presence? I had tried running away from it once before, and found it
more real to me in the King's Road, Brighton, than on the banks of the
Thames. No!--ill or well, I would stay on; the very first night of my
absence might be the night of possible explanation.

Having so decided, I dressed and proceeded to the office, remaining
there, however, only long enough to write a note to Mr. Craven, saying I
had a very bad cold, and begging him to excuse my attendance.

After that I turned my steps to Munro's lodgings. If it were possible
to avert an illness, I had no desire to become invalided in Mr.
Elmsdale's Hall.

Fortunately, Munro was at home and at dinner. "Just come in time, old
fellow," he said, cheerily. "It is not one day in a dozen you would have
found me here at this hour. Sit down, and have some steak. Can't
eat--why, what's the matter, man? You don't mean to say you have got
another nervous attack. If you have, I declare I shall lodge a complaint
against you with Mr. Craven."

"I am not nervous," I answered; "but I have caught cold, and I want you
to put me to rights."

"Wait till I have finished my dinner," he replied; and then he proceeded
to cut himself another piece of steak--having demolished which, and seen
cheese placed on the table, he said:

"Now, Harry, we'll get to business, if you please. Where is this cold
you were talking about?"

I explained as well as I could, and he listened to me without
interruption. When I had quite finished, he said:

"Hal Patterson, you are either becoming a hypochondriac, or you are
treating me to half confidences. Your cold is not worth speaking about.
Go home, and get to bed, and take a basin of gruel, or a glass of
something hot, after you are in bed, and your cold will be well in the
morning. But there is something more than a cold the matter with you.
What has come to you, to make a few rheumatic pains and a slight sore
throat seem of consequence in your eyes?"

"I am afraid of being ill," I answered.

"Why are you afraid of being ill? why do you imagine you are going to be
ill? why should you fall ill any more than anybody else?"

I sat silent for a minute, then I said, "Ned, if I tell you, will you
promise upon your honour not to laugh at me?"

"I won't, if I can help it. I don't fancy I shall feel inclined to
laugh," he replied.

"And unless I give you permission, you will not repeat what I am going
to tell you to anyone?"

"That I can safely promise," he said. "Go on."

And I went on. I began at the beginning and recited all the events
chronicled in the preceding pages; and he listened, asking no questions,
interposing no remark.

When I ceased speaking, he rose and said he must think over the
statements I had made.

"I will come and look you up to-night, Patterson," he observed. "Go home
to River Hall, and keep yourself quiet. Don't mention that you feel ill.
Let matters go on as usual. I will be with you about nine. I have an
appointment now that I must keep."

Before nine Munro appeared, hearty, healthy, vigorous as usual.

"If this place were in Russell Square," he said, after a hasty glance
round the drawing-room, "I should not mind taking a twenty-one years'
lease of it at forty pounds a year, even if ghosts were included in the
fixtures."

"I see you place no credence in my story," I said, a little stiffly.

"I place every credence in your story," was the reply. "I believe you
believe it, and that is saying more than most people could say nowadays
about their friends' stories if they spoke the truth."

It was of no use for me to express any further opinion upon the matter.
I felt if I talked for a thousand years I should still fail to convince
my listener there was anything supernatural in the appearances beheld at
River Hall. It is so easy to pooh-pooh another man's tale; it is
pleasant to explain every phenomenon that the speaker has never
witnessed; it is so hard to credit that anything absolutely
unaccountable on natural grounds has been witnessed by your dearest
friend, that, knowing my only chance of keeping my temper and preventing
Munro gaining a victory over me was to maintain a discreet silence, I
let him talk on and strive to account for the appearances I had
witnessed in his own way.

"Your acquaintance of the halting gait and high shoulder may or might
have some hand in the affair," he finished. "My own opinion is he has
not. The notion that you are being watched, is, if my view of the
matter be correct, only a further development of the nervous excitement
which has played you all sort of fantastic tricks since you came to
this house. If anyone does wander through the gardens, I should set him
down as a monomaniac or an intending burglar, and in any case the very
best thing you can do is to pack up your traps and leave River Hall to
its fate."

I did not answer; indeed, I felt too sick at heart to do so. What he
said was what other people would say. If I could not evolve some clearer
theory than I had yet been able to hit on, I should be compelled to
leave the mystery of River Hall just as I had found it. Miss Blake had,
I knew, written to Mr. Craven that the house had better be let again, as
there "was no use in his keeping a clerk there in free lodgings for
ever": and now came Ned Munro, with his worldly wisdom, to assure me
mine was a wild-goose chase, and that the only sensible course for me to
pursue was to abandon it altogether. For the first time, I felt
disheartened about the business, and I suppose I showed my
disappointment, for Munro, drawing his chair nearer to me, laid a
friendly hand on my shoulder and said:

"Cheer up, Harry! never look so downhearted because your nervous system
has been playing you false. It was a plucky thing to do, and to carry
out; but you have suffered enough for honour, and I should not continue
the experiment of trying how much you can suffer, were I in your shoes."

"You are very kind, Munro," I answered; "but I cannot give up. If I had
all the wish in the world to leave here to-night, a will stronger than
my own would bring me back here to-morrow. The place haunts me. Believe
me, I suffer less from its influence, seated in this room, than when I
am in the office or walking along the Strand."

"Upon the same principle, I suppose, that a murderer always carries the
memory of his victim's face about with him; though he may have felt
callously indifferent whilst the body was an actual presence."

"Precisely," I agreed.

"But then, my dear fellow, you are not a murderer in any sense of the
word. You did not create the ghosts supposed to be resident here."

"No; but I feel bound to find out who did," I answered.

"That is, if you can, I suppose?" he suggested.

"I feel certain I shall," was the answer. "I have an idea in my mind,
but it wants shape. There is a mystery, I am convinced, to solve which,
only the merest hint is needed."

"There are a good many things in this world in the same position, I
should say," answered Munro. "However, Patterson, we won't argue about
the matter; only there is one thing upon which I am determined--after
this evening, I will come and stay here every night. I can say I am
going to sleep out of town. Then, if there are ghosts, we can hunt them
together; if there are none, we shall rest all the better. Do you agree
to that?" and he held out his hand, which I clasped in mine, with a
feeling of gratitude and relief impossible to describe.

As he said, I had done enough for honour; but still I could not give
up, and here was the support and help I required so urgently, ready
for my need.

"I am so much obliged," I said at last.

"Pooh! nonsense!" he answered. "You would do as much or more for me any
day. There, don't let us get sentimental. You must not come out, but,
following the example of your gallant Colonel Morris, I will, if you
please, smoke a cigar in the garden. The moon must be up by this time."

I drew back the curtains and unfastened the shutter, which offered
egress to the grounds, then, having rung for Mrs. Stott to remove the
supper-tray, I sat down by the fire to await Munro's return, and began
musing concerning the hopelessness of my position, the gulf of poverty
and prejudice and struggle that lay between Helena and myself.

I was determined to win her; but the prize seemed unattainable as the
Lord Mayor's robes must have appeared to Whittington, when he stood at
the foot of Highgate Hill; and, prostrated as I was by that subtle
malady to which as yet Munro had given no name, the difficulties grew
into mountains, the chances of success dwarfed themselves into
molehills.

Whilst thus thinking vaguely, purposelessly, but still most miserably, I
was aroused from reverie by the noise of a door being shut cautiously
and carefully--an outer door, and yet one with the sound of which I was
unacquainted.

Hurrying across the hall, I flung the hall-door wide, and looked out
into the night. There was sufficient moonlight to have enabled me to
discern any object moving up or down the lane, but not a creature was in
sight, not a cat or dog even traversed the weird whiteness of that
lonely thoroughfare.

Despite Munro's dictum, I passed out into the night air, and went down
to the very banks of the Thames. There was not a boat within hail. The
nearest barge lay a couple of hundred yards from the shore.

As I retraced my steps, I paused involuntarily beside the door, which
led by a separate entrance to the library.

"That is the door which shut," I said to myself, pressing my hand gently
along the lintel, and sweeping the hitherto unbroken cobwebs away as I
did so. "If my nerves are playing me false this time, the sooner their
tricks are stopped the better, for no human being opened this door, no
living creature has passed through it."

Having made up my mind on which points, I re-entered the house, and
walked into the drawing-room, where Munro, pale as death, stood draining
a glass of neat brandy.

"What is the matter?" I cried, hurriedly. "What have you seen, what--"

"Let me alone for awhile," he interrupted, speaking in a thick, hoarse
whisper; then immediately asked, "Is that the library with the windows
nearest the river?"

"Yes," I answered.

"I want to go into that room," he said, still in the same tone.

"Not now," I entreated. "Sit down and compose yourself; we will go into
it, if you like, before you leave."

"Now, now--this minute," he persisted. "I tell you, Patterson, I must
see what is in it."

Attempting no further opposition, I lit a couple of candles, and giving
one into his hand, led the way to the door of the library, which I
unlocked and flung wide open.

To one particular part Munro directed his steps, casting the light
from his candle on the carpet, peering around in search of something
he hoped, and yet still feared, to see. Then he went to the shutters
and examined the fastenings, and finding all well secured, made a
sign for me to precede him out of the room. At the door he paused,
and took one more look into the darkness of the apartment, after
which he waited while I turned the key in the lock, accompanying me
back across the hall.

When we were once more in the drawing-room, I renewed my inquiry as to
what he had seen; but he bade me let him alone, and sat mopping great
beads of perspiration off his forehead, till, unable to endure the
mystery any longer, I said:

"Munro, whatever it may be that you have seen, tell me all, I entreat.
Any certainty will be better than the possibilities I shall be conjuring
up for myself."

He looked at me wearily, and then drawing his hand across his eyes, as
if trying to clear his vision, he answered, with an uneasy laugh:

"It was nonsense, of course. I did not think I was so imaginative, but I
declare I fancied I saw, looking through the windows of that now utterly
dark room, a man lying dead on the floor."

"Did you hear a door shut?" I inquired.

"Distinctly," he answered; "and what is more, I saw a shadow flitting
through the other door leading out of the library, which we found, if
you remember, bolted on the inside."

"And what inference do you draw from all this?"

"Either that some one is, in a to me unintelligible way, playing a very
clever game at River Hall, or else that I am mad."

"You are no more mad than other people who have lived in this house,"
I answered.

"I don't know how you have done it, Patterson," he went on, unheeding my
remark. "I don't, upon my soul, know how you managed to stay on here. It
would have driven many a fellow out of his mind. I do not like leaving
you. I wish I had told my landlady I should not be back. I will, after
this time; but to-night I am afraid some patient may be wanting me."

"My dear fellow," I answered, "the affair is new to you, but it is not
new to me. I would rather sleep alone in the haunted house, than in a
mansion filled from basement to garret, with the unsolved mystery of
this place haunting me."

"I wish you had never heard of, nor seen, nor come near it," he
exclaimed, bitterly; "but, however, let matters turn out as they will, I
mean to stick to you, Patterson. There's my hand on it."

And he gave me his hand, which was cold as ice--cold as that of one
dead.

"I am going to have some punch, Ned," I remarked. "That is, if you will
stop and have some."

"All right," he answered. "Something 'hot and strong' will hurt neither
of us, but you ought to have yours in bed. May I give it to you there?"

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, and we drew our chairs close to the fire, and,
under the influence of a decoction which Ned insisted upon making
himself, and at making which, indeed, he was much more of an adept than
I, we talked valiantly about ghosts and their doings, and about how our
credit and happiness were bound up in finding out the reason why the
Uninhabited House was haunted.

"Depend upon it, Hal," said Munro, putting on his coat and hat,
preparatory to taking his departure, "depend upon it that unfortunate
Robert Elmsdale must have been badly cheated by some one, and sorely
exercised in spirit, before he blew out his brains."

To this remark, which, remembering what he had said in the middle of the
day, showed the wonderful difference that exists between theory and
practice, I made no reply.

Unconsciously, almost, a theory had been forming in my own mind, but I
felt much corroboration of its possibility must be obtained before I
dare give it expression.

Nevertheless, it had taken such hold of me that I could not shake off
the impression, which was surely, though slowly, gaining ground, even
against the dictates of my better judgment.

"I will just read over the account of the inquest once again," I
decided, as I bolted and barred the chain after Munro's departure; and
so, by way of ending the night pleasantly, I took out the report, and
studied it till two, chiming from a neighbouring church, reminded me
that the fire was out, that I had a bad cold, and that I ought to have
been between the blankets and asleep hours previously.

13. LIGHT AT LAST

Now, whether it was owing to having gone out the evening before from a
very warm room into the night air, and, afterwards, into that chilly
library, or to having sat reading the report given about Mr.
Elmsdale's death till I grew chilled to my very marrow, I cannot say,
all I know is, that when I awoke next morning I felt very ill, and
welcomed, with rejoicing of spirit, Ned Munro, who arrived about
mid-day, and at once declared he had come to spend a fortnight with me
in the Uninhabited House.

"I have arranged it all. Got a friend to take charge of my patients;
stated that I am going to pay a visit in the country, and so forth. And
now, how are you?"

I told him, very truthfully, that I did not feel at all well.

"Then you will have to get well, or else we shall never be able to
fathom this business," he said. "The first thing, consequently, I shall
do, is to write a prescription, and get it made up. After that, I mean
to take a survey of the house and grounds."

"Do precisely what you like," I answered. "This is Liberty Hall to the
living as well as to the dead," and I laid my head on the back of the
easy-chair, and went off to sleep.

All that day Munro seemed to feel little need of my society. He examined
every room in the house, and every square inch about the premises. He
took short walks round the adjacent neighbourhood, and made, to his own
satisfaction, a map of River Hall and the country and town thereunto
adjoining. Then he had a great fire lighted in the library, and spent
the afternoon tapping the walls, trying the floors, and trying to obtain
enlightenment from the passage which led from the library direct to the
door opening into the lane.

After dinner, he asked me to lend him the shorthand report I had made of
the evidence given at the inquest. He made no comment upon it when he
finished reading, but sat, for a few minutes, with one hand shading his
eyes, and the other busily engaged in making some sort of a sketch on
the back of an old letter.

"What are you doing, Munro?" I asked, at last.

"You shall see presently," he answered, without looking up, or pausing
in his occupation.

At the expiration of a few minutes, he handed me over the paper, saying:

"Do you know anyone that resembles?"

I took the sketch, looked at it, and cried out incoherently in my
surprise.

"Well," he went on, "who is it?"

"The man who follows me! The man I saw in this lane!"

"And what is his name?"

"That is precisely what I desire to find out," I answered. "When did you
see him? How did you identify him? Why did--"

"I have something to tell you, if you will only be quiet, and let me
speak," he interrupted. "It was, as you know, late last night before I
left here, and for that reason, and also because I was perplexed and
troubled, I walked fast--faster than even is my wont. The road was very
lonely; I scarcely met a creature along the road, flooded with the
moonlight. I never was out on a lovelier night; I had never, even in the
country, felt I had it so entirely to myself.

"Every here and there I came within sight of the river, and it seemed,
on each occasion, as though a great mirror had been put up to make every
object on land--every house, every tree, bush, fern, more clearly
visible than it had been before. I am coming to my story, Hal, so don't
look so impatient.

"At last, as I came once again in view of the Thames, with the moon
reflected in the water, and the dark arches of the bridge looking black
and solemn contrasted against the silvery stream, I saw before me, a
long way before me, a man whose figure stood out in relief against the
white road--a man walking wearily and with evident difficulty--a man,
too, slightly deformed.

"I walked on rapidly, till within about a score yards of him, then I
slackened my speed, and taking care that my leisurely footsteps should
be heard, overtook him by degrees, and then, when I was quite abreast,
asked if he could oblige me with a light.

"He looked up in my face, and said, with a forced, painful smile and
studied courtesy of manner:

"'I am sorry, sir, to say that I do not smoke.'

"I do not know exactly what reply I made. I know his countenance struck
me so forcibly, it was with difficulty I could utter some commonplace
remark concerning the beauty of the night.

"'I do not like moonlight,' he said, and as he said it, something, a
connection of ideas, or a momentary speculation, came upon me so
suddenly, that once again I failed to reply coherently, but asked if he
could tell me the shortest way to the Brompton Road.

"'To which end?' he inquired.

"'That nearest Hyde Park Corner,' I answered.

"As it turned out, no question could have served my purpose better.

"'I am going part of the way there,' he said, 'and will show you the
nearest route--that is,' he added, 'if you can accommodate your pace to
mine,' and he pointed, as he spoke, to his right foot, which evidently
was causing him considerable pain.

"Now, that was something quite in my way, and by degrees I got him to
tell me about the accident which had caused his slight deformity. I told
him I was a doctor, and had been to see a patient, and so led him on to
talk about sickness and disease, till at length he touched upon diseases
of a morbid character; asking me if it were true that in some special
maladies the patient was haunted by an apparition which appeared at a
particular hour.

"I told him it was quite true, and that such cases were peculiarly
distressing, and generally proved most difficult to cure--mentioning
several well-authenticated instances, which I do not mean to detail to
you, Patterson, as I know you have an aversion to anything savouring of
medical shop.

"'You doctors do not believe in the actual existence of any such
apparitions, of course?' he remarked, after a pause.

"I told him we did not; that we knew they had their rise and origin
solely in the malady of the patient.

"'And yet,' he said, 'some ghost stories--I am not now speaking of those
associated with disease, are very extraordinary, unaccountable--'

"'Very extraordinary, no doubt,' I answered; 'but I should hesitate
before saying unaccountable. Now, there is that River Hall place up the
river. There must be some rational way of explaining the appearances in
that house, though no one has yet found any clue to that enigma.'

"'River Hall--where is that?' he asked; then suddenly added, 'Oh! I
remember now: you mean the Uninhabited House, as it is called. Yes,
there is a curious story, if you like. May I ask if you are interested
in any way in that matter?'

"'Not in any way, except that I have been spending the evening there
with a friend of mine.'

"'Has he seen anything of the reputed ghost?' asked my companion,
eagerly. 'Is he able to throw any light on the dark subject?'

"'I don't think he can,' I replied. 'He has seen the usual appearances
which I believe it is correct to see at River Hall; but so far, they
have added nothing to his previous knowledge.'

"'He has seen, you say?'

"'Yes; all the orthodox lions of that cheerful house.'

"'And still he is not daunted--he is not afraid?'

"'He is not afraid. Honestly, putting ghosts entirely on one side, I
should not care to be in his shoes, all alone in a lonely house.'

"'And you would be right, sir,' was the answer. 'A man must be mad to
run such a risk.'

"'So I told him,' I agreed.

"'Why, I would not stay in that house alone for any money which could be
offered to me,' he went on, eagerly.

"'I cannot go so far as that,' I said; 'but still it must be a very
large sum which could induce me to do so.'

"'It ought to be pulled down, sir,' he continued; 'the walls ought to be
razed to the ground.'

"'I suppose they will,' I answered, 'when Miss Elmsdale, the owner,
comes of age; unless, indeed, our modern Don Quixote runs the ghost to
earth before that time.'

"'Did you say the young man was ill?' asked my companion.

"'He has got a cold,' I answered.

"'And colds are nasty things to get rid of,' he commented, 'particularly
in those low-lying localities. That is a most unhealthy part; you ought
to order your patient a thorough change of air.'

"'I have, but he won't take advice,' was my reply. 'He has nailed his
colours to the mast, and means, I believe, to stay in River Hall till he
kills the ghost, or the ghost kills him.'

"'What a foolish youth!'

"'Undoubtedly; but, then, youth is generally foolish, and we have all
our crotchets.'

"We had reached the other side of the bridge by this time, and saying
his road lay in an opposite direction to mine, the gentleman I have
sketched told me the nearest way to take, and bade me a civil good
night, adding, 'I suppose I ought to say good morning.'"

"And is that all?" I asked, as Munro paused.

"Bide a wee, as the Scotch say, my son. I strode off along the road he
indicated, and then, instead of making the detour he had kindly sketched
out for my benefit, chose the first turning to my left, and, quite
convinced he would soon pass that way, took up my position in the
portico of a house which lay well in shadow. It stood a little back from
the side-path, and a poor little Arab sleeping on the stone step proved
to me the policeman was not over and above vigilant in that
neighbourhood.

"I waited, Heaven only knows how long, thinking all the time I must be
mistaken, and that his home did lie in the direction he took; but at
last, looking out between the pillars and the concealing shrubs, I saw
him. He was looking eagerly into the distance, with such a drawn, worn,
painful expression, that for a moment my heart relented, and I thought I
would let the poor devil go in peace.

"It was only for a moment, however; touching the sleeping boy, I bade
him awake, if he wanted to earn a shilling. 'Keep that gentleman in
sight, and get to know for me where he lives, and come back here, and I
will give you a shilling, and perhaps two, for your pains.'

"With his eyes still heavy with slumber, and his perceptions for the
moment dulled, he sped after the figure, limping wearily on. I saw him
ask my late companion for charity, and follow the gentleman for a few
steps, when the latter, threatening him with his stick, the boy dodged
to escape a blow, and then, by way of showing how lightly his bosom's
load sat upon him, began turning wheels down the middle of the street.
He passed the place where I stood, and spun a hundred feet further on,
then he gathered himself together, and seeing no one in sight,
stealthily crept back to his porch again.

"'You young rascal,' I said, 'I told you to follow him home. I want to
know his name and address particularly.'

"'Come along, then,' he answered, 'and I'll show you. Bless you, we all
knows him--better than we do the police, or anybody hereabouts. He's a
beak and a ward up at the church, whatever that is, and he has
building-yards as big, oh! as big as two workhouses, and--'"

"His name, Munro--his name?" I gasped.

"Harringford."

I expected it. I knew then that for days and weeks my suspicions had
been vaguely connecting Mr. Harringford with the mystery of the
Uninhabited House.

This was the hiding figure in my dream, the link hitherto wanting in my
reveries concerning River Hall. I had been looking for this--waiting for
it; I understood at last; and yet, when Munro mentioned the name of the
man who had thought it worth his while to watch my movements, I shrunk
from the conclusion which forced itself upon me.

"Must we go on to the end with this affair?" I asked, after a pause, and
my voice was so changed, it sounded like that of a stranger to me.

"We do not yet know what the end will prove," Munro answered; "but
whatever it may be, we must not turn back now."

"How ought we to act, do you think?" I inquired.

"We ought not to act at all," he answered. "We had better wait and see
what his next move will be. He is certain to take some step. He will try
to get you out of this house by hook or by crook. He has already striven
to effect his purpose through Miss Elmsdale, and failed. It will
therefore be necessary for him to attempt some other scheme. It is not
for me to decide on the course he is likely to pursue; but, if I were in
your place, I should stay within doors at night. I should not sit in the
dark near windows still unshuttered. I should not allow any strangers to
enter the house, and I should have a couple of good dogs running loose
about the premises. I have brought Brenda with me as a beginning, and I
think I know where to lay my hand on a good old collie, who will stay
near any house I am in, and let no one trespass about it with impunity."

"Good heavens! Munro, you don't mean to say you think the man would
_murder_ me!" I exclaimed.

"I don't know what he might, or might not do," he replied. "There is
something about this house he is afraid may be found out, and he is
afraid you will find it out. Unless I am greatly mistaken, a great deal
depends upon the secret being preserved intact. At present we can only
surmise its nature; but I mean, in the course of a few days, to know
more of Mr. Harringford's antecedents than he might be willing to
communicate to anyone. What is the matter with you, Hal? You look as
white as a corpse."

"I was only thinking," I answered, "of one evening last week, when I
fell asleep in the drawing-room, and woke in a fright, imagining I saw
that horrid light streaming out from the library, and a face pressed up
close to the glass of the window on my left hand peering into the room."

"I have no doubt the face was there," he said, gravely; "but I do not
think it will come again, so long as Brenda is alive. Nevertheless, I
should be careful. Desperate men are capable of desperate deeds."

The first post next morning brought me a letter from Mr. Craven, which
proved Mr. Harringford entertained for the present no intention of
proceeding to extremities with me.

He had been in Buckingham Street, so said my principal, and offered to
buy the freehold of River Hall for twelve hundred pounds.

Mr. Craven thought he might be induced to increase his bid to fifteen
hundred, and added: "Miss Blake has half consented to the arrangement,
and Miss Elmsdale is eager for the matter to be pushed on, so that the
transfer may take place directly she comes of age. I confess, now an
actual offer has been made, I feel reluctant to sacrifice the property
for such a sum, and doubt whether it might not be better to offer it for
sale by auction--that is, if you think there is no chance of your
discovering the reason why River Hall bears so bad a name. Have you
obtained any clue to the mystery?"

To this I replied in a note, which Munro himself conveyed to the office.

"I have obtained an important clue; but that is all I can say for the
present. Will you tell Mr. Harringford I am at River Hall, and that you
think, being on the spot and knowing all about the place, I could
negotiate the matter better than anyone else in the office? If he is
desirous of purchasing, he will not object to calling some evening and
discussing the matter with me. I have an idea that a large sum of money
might be made out of this property by an enterprising man like Mr.
Harringford; and it is just possible, after hearing what I have to say,
he may find himself able to make a much better offer for the Uninhabited
House than that mentioned in your note. At all events, the interview can
do no harm. I am still suffering so much from cold that it would be
imprudent for me to wait upon Mr. Harringford, which would otherwise be
only courteous on my part."

"Capital!" said Munro, reading over my shoulder. "That will bring my
gentleman to River Hall--. But what is wrong, Patterson? You are surely
not going to turn chickenhearted now?"

"No," I answered; "but I wish it was over. I dread something, and I do
not know what it is. Though nothing shall induce me to waver, I am
afraid, Munro. I am not ashamed to say it: I am afraid, as I was the
first night I stayed in this house. I am not a coward, but I am afraid."

He did not reply for a moment. He walked to the window and looked out
over the Thames; then he came back, and, wringing my hand, said, in
tones that tried unsuccessfully to be cheerful:

"I know what it is, old fellow. Do you think I have not had the feeling
myself, since I came here? But remember, it has to be done, and I will
stand by you. I will see you through it."

"It won't do for you to be in the room, though," I suggested.

"No; but I will stay within earshot," he answered.

We did not talk much more about the matter. Men rarely do talk much
about anything which seems to them very serious, and I may candidly say
that I had never felt anything in my life to be much more serious than
that impending interview with Mr. Harringford.

That he would come we never doubted for a moment, and we were right. As
soon as it was possible for him to appoint an interview, Mr.
Harringford did so.

"Nine o'clock on to-morrow (Thursday) evening," was the hour he named,
apologizing at the same time for being unable to call at an earlier
period of the day.

"Humph!" said Munro, turning the note over. "You will receive him in the
library, of course, Hal?"

I replied such was my intention.

"And that will be a move for which he is in no way prepared," commented
my friend.

From the night when Munro walked and talked with Mr. Harringford, no
person came spying round and about the Uninhabited House. Of this fact
we were satisfied, for Brenda, who gave tongue at the slightest murmur
wafted over the river from the barges lying waiting for the tide, never
barked as though she were on the track of living being; whilst the
collie--a tawny-black, unkempt, ill-conditioned, savage-natured, but yet
most true and faithful brute, which Munro insisted on keeping within
doors, never raised his voice from the day he arrived at River Hall,
till the night Mr. Harringford rang the visitor's-bell, when the animal,
who had been sleeping with his nose resting on his paws, lifted his head
and indulged in a prolonged howl.

Not a nice beginning to an interview which I dreaded.

14. A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW

I was in the library, waiting to receive Mr. Harringford. A bright fire
blazed on the hearth, the table was strewn with papers Munro had brought
to me from the office, the gas was all ablaze, and the room looked
bright and cheerful--as bright and as cheerful as if no ghost had been
ever heard of in connection with it.

At a few minutes past nine my visitor arrived. Mrs. Stott ushered him
into the library, and he entered the room evidently intending to shake
hands with me, which civility I affected not to notice.

After the first words of greeting were exchanged, I asked if he would
have tea, or coffee, or wine; and finding he rejected all offers of
refreshment, I rang the bell and told Mrs. Stott I could dispense with
her attendance for the night.

"Do you mean to tell me you stay in this house entirely alone?" asked
my visitor.

"Until Mrs. Stott came I was quite alone," I answered.

"I would not have done it for any consideration," he remarked.

"Possibly not," I replied. "People are differently constituted."

It was not long before we got to business. His offer of twelve hundred
pounds I pooh-poohed as ridiculous.

"Well," he said--by this time I knew I had a keen man of business to
deal with--"put the place up to auction, and see whether you will
get as much."

"There are two, or rather, three ways of dealing with the property,
which have occurred to me, Mr. Harringford," I explained. "One is
letting or selling this house for a reformatory, or school. Ghosts in
that case won't trouble the inmates, we may be quite certain; another is
utilizing the buildings for a manufactory; and the third is laying the
ground out for building purposes, thus--"

As I spoke, I laid before him a plan for a tri-sided square of building,
the south side being formed by the river. I had taken great pains with
the drawing of this plan: the future houses, the future square, the
future river-walk with seats at intervals, were all to be found in the
roll which I unfolded and laid before him, and the effect my sketch
produced surprised me.

"In Heaven's name, Mr. Patterson," he asked, "where did you get this?
You never drew it out of your own head!"

I hastened to assure him I had certainly not got it out of any other
person's head; but he smiled incredulously.

"Probably," he suggested, "Mr. Elmsdale left some such sketch behind
him--something, at all events, which suggested the idea to you."

"If he did, I never saw nor heard of it," I answered.

"You may have forgotten the circumstance," he persisted; "but I feel
confident you must have seen something like this before. Perhaps amongst
the papers in Mr. Craven's office."

"May I inquire why you have formed such an opinion?" I said, a
little stiffly.

"Simply because this tri-sided square was a favourite project of the
late owner of River Hall," he replied. "After the death of his wife,
the place grew distasteful to him, and I have often heard him say he
would convert the ground into one of the handsomest squares in the
neighbourhood of London. All he wanted was a piece of additional
land lying to the west, which piece is, I believe, now to be had at
a price--"

I sat like one stricken dumb. By no mental process, for which I could
ever account, had that idea been evolved. It sprang into life at a
bound. It came to me in my sleep, and I wakened at once with the whole
plan clear and distinct before my mind's eye, as it now lay clear and
distinct before Mr. Harringford.

"It is very extraordinary," I managed at last to stammer out; "for I can
honestly say I never heard even a suggestion of Mr. Elmsdale's design;
indeed, I did not know he had ever thought of building upon the ground."

"Such was the fact, however," replied my visitor. "He was a speculative
man in many ways. Yes, very speculative, and full of plans and projects.
However, Mr. Patterson," he proceeded, "all this only proves the truth
of the old remark, that 'great wits and little wits sometimes jump
together.'"

There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice, as in his words, but I did not
give much heed to it. The design, then, was not mine. It had come to me
in sleep, it had been forced upon me, it had been explained to me in a
word, and as I asked myself, By whom? I was unable to repress a shudder.

"You are not well, I fear," said Mr. Harringford; "this place seems to
have affected your health. Surely you have acted imprudently in risking
so much to gain so little."

"I do not agree with you," I replied. "However, time will show whether I
have been right or wrong in coming here. I have learned many things of
which I was previously in ignorance, and I think I hold a clue in my
hands which, properly followed, may lead me to the hidden mystery of
River Hall."

"Indeed!" he exclaimed. "May I ask the nature of that clue?"

"It would be premature for me to say more than this, that I am inclined
to doubt whether Mr. Elmsdale committed suicide."

"Do you think his death was the result of accident, then?" he inquired,
his face blanching to a ghastly whiteness.

"No, I do not," I answered, bluntly. "But my thoughts can have little
interest for anyone, at present. What we want to talk about is the sale
and purchase of this place. The offer you made to Mr. Craven, I consider
ridiculous. Let on building lease, the land alone would bring in a
handsome income, and the house ought to sell for about as much as you
offer for the whole property."

"Perhaps it might, if you could find a purchaser," he answered; "and the
land might return an income, if you could let it as you suggest; but, in
the meantime, while the grass grows, the steed starves; and while you
are waiting for your buyer and your speculative builder, Miss Blake and
Miss Elmsdale will have to walk barefoot, waiting for shoes you may
never be able to provide for them."

There was truth in this, but only a half-truth, I felt, so I said:

"When examined at the inquest, Mr. Harringford, you stated, I think,
that you were under considerable obligations to Mr. Elmsdale?"

"Did I?" he remarked. "Possibly, he had given me a helping-hand
once or twice, and probably I mentioned the fact. It is a long time
ago, though."

"Not so very long," I answered; "not long enough, I should imagine, to
enable you to forget any benefits you may have received from Mr.
Elmsdale."

"Mr. Patterson," he interrupted, "are we talking business or sentiment?
If the former, please understand I have my own interests to attend to,
and that I mean to attend to them. If the latter, I am willing, if you
say Miss Elmsdale has pressing need for the money, to send her my cheque
for fifty or a hundred pounds. Charity is one thing, trade another, and
I do not care to mix them. I should never have attained to my present
position, had I allowed fine feelings to interfere with the driving of a
bargain. I don't want River Hall. I would not give that," and he snapped
his fingers, "to have the title-deeds in my hands to-morrow; but as Miss
Elmsdale wishes to sell, and as no one else will buy, I offer what I
consider a fair price for the place. If you think you can do better,
well and good. If--"

He stopped suddenly in his sentence, then rising, he cried, "It is a
trick--a vile, infamous, disgraceful trick!" while his utterance grew
thick, and his face began to work like that of a person in convulsions.

"What do you mean?" I asked, rising also, and turning to look in the
direction he indicated with outstretched arm and dilated eyes.

Then I saw--no need for him to answer. Standing in the entrance to the
strong room was Robert Elmsdale himself, darkness for a background, the
light of the gas falling full upon his face.

Slowly, sternly, he came forward, step by step. With footfalls that
fell noiselessly, he advanced across the carpet, moving steadily
forward towards Mr. Harringford, who, beating the air with his hands,
screamed, "Keep him off! don't let him touch me!" and fell full length
on the floor.

Next instant, Munro was in the room. "Hullo, what is the matter?" he
asked. "What have you done to him--what has he been doing to you?"

I could not answer. Looking in my face, I think Munro understood we had
both seen that which no man can behold unappalled.

"Come, Hal," he said, "bestir yourself. Whatever has happened, don't
sink under it like a woman. Help me to lift him. Merciful Heaven!" he
added, as he raised the prostrate figure. "He is dead!"

To this hour, I do not know how we managed to carry him into the
drawing-room. I cannot imagine how our trembling hands bore that inert
body out of the library and across the hall. It seems like a dream to me
calling up Mrs. Stott, and then tearing away from the house in quest of
further medical help, haunted, every step I took, by the memory of that
awful presence, the mere sight of which had stricken down one of us in
the midst of his buying, and bargaining, and boasting.

I had done it--I had raised that ghost--I had brought the man to his
death; and as I fled through the night, innocent as I had been of the
thought of such a catastrophe, I understood what Cain must have felt
when he went out to live his life with the brand of murderer upon him.

But the man was not dead; though he lay for hours like one from whom
life had departed, he did not die then. We had all the genius, and
knowledge, and skill of London at his service. If doctors could have
saved him, he had lived. If nursing could have availed him, he had
recovered, for I never left him.

When the end came I was almost worn out myself.

And the end came very soon.

"No more doctors," whispered the sick man; "they cannot cure me. Send
for a clergyman, and a lawyer, Mr. Craven as well as any other. It is
all over now; and better so; life is but a long fever. Perhaps he will
sleep now, and let me sleep too. Yes, I killed him. Why, I will tell
you. Give me some wine.

"What I said at the inquest about owing my worldly prosperity to him was
true. I trace my pecuniary success to Mr. Elmsdale; but I trace also
hours, months, and years of anguish to his agency. My God! the nights
that man has made me spend when he was living, the nights I have spent
in consequence of his death--"

He stopped; he had mentally gone back over a long journey. He was
retracing the road he had travelled, from youth to old age. For he was
old, if not in years, in sorrow. Lying on his death-bed, he understood
for what a game he had burnt his candle to the socket; comprehended how
the agony, and the suspense, and the suffering, and the long, long fever
of life, which with him never knew a remittent moment, had robbed him of
that which every man has a right to expect, some pleasure in the course
of his existence.

"When I first met Elmsdale," he went on, "I was a young man, and an
ambitious one. I was a clerk in the City. I had been married a couple of
years to a wife I loved dearly. She was possessed of only a small dot;
and after furnishing our house, and paying for all the expenses incident
on the coming of a first child, we thought ourselves fortunate in
knowing there was still a deposit standing in our name at the
Joint-Stock Bank, for something over two hundred pounds.

"Nevertheless, I was anxious. So far, we had lived within our income;
but with an annual advance of salary only amounting to ten pounds, or
thereabouts, I did not see how we were to manage when more children
came, particularly as the cost of living increased day by day. It was a
dear year that of which I am speaking.

"I do not precisely remember on what occasion it was I first saw Mr.
Elmsdale; but I knew afterwards he picked me out as a person likely to
be useful to him.

"He was on good terms with my employers, and asked them to allow me to
bid for some houses he wanted to purchase at a sale.

"To this hour I do not know why he did not bid for them himself. He gave
me a five-pound note for my services; and that was the beginning of our
connection. Off and on, I did many things for him of one sort or
another, and made rather a nice addition to my salary out of doing them,
till the devil, or he, or both, put it into my head to start as builder
and speculator on my own account.

"I had two hundred pounds and my furniture: that was the whole of my
capital; but Elmsdale found me money. I thought my fortune was made, the
day he advanced me my first five hundred pounds. If I had known--if I
had known--"

"Don't talk any more," I entreated. "What can it avail to speak of such
matters now?"

He turned towards me impatiently.

"Not talk," he repeated, "when I have for years been as one dumb,
and at length the string of my tongue is loosened! Not talk, when,
if I keep silence now, he will haunt me in eternity, as he has
haunted me in time!"

I did not answer, I only moistened his parched lips, and bathed his
burning forehead as tenderly as my unaccustomed hands understood how to
perform such offices.

"Lift me up a little, please," he said; and I put the pillows in
position as deftly as I could.

"You are not a bad fellow," he remarked, "but I am not going to leave
you anything."

"God forbid!" I exclaimed, involuntarily.

"Are not you in want of money?" he asked.

"Not of yours," I answered.

"Mine," he said; "it is not mine, it is his. He thought a great deal of
money, and he has come back for it. He can't rest, and he won't let me
rest till I have paid him principal and interest--compound interest.
Yes--well, I am able to do even that."

We sat silent for a few minutes, then he spoke again.

"When I first went into business with my borrowed capital, nothing I
touched really succeeded. I found myself going back--back. Far better
was my position as clerk; then at least I slept sound at nights, and
relished my meals. But I had tasted of so-called independence, and I
could not go back to be at the beck and call of an employer. Ah! no
employer ever made me work so hard as Mr. Elmsdale; no beck and call
were ever so imperative as his.

"I pass over a long time of anxiety, struggle, and hardship. The world
thought me a prosperous man; probably no human being, save Mr. Elmsdale,
understood my real position, and he made my position almost unendurable.

"How I came first to bet on races, would be a long story, longer than I
have time to tell; but my betting began upon a very small scale, and I
always won--always in the beginning. I won so certainly and so
continuously, that finally I began to hope for deliverance from Mr.
Elmsdale's clutches.

"I don't know how"--the narrative was not recited straight on as I am
writing it, but by starts, as strength served him--"Mr. Elmsdale