sufficed to
kill myself, had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog--had my
intellect or my spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my
will."

"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and
mice are never found in it."

"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a
resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?"

"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house
the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"

"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door of
the bedroom which I occupied forms a starting-point or receptacle for
the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have
the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the
small back-yard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the
building."

"And you think, if I did that----"

"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I
am right that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."

"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write
to you."

About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling me that
he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found the two
letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had taken
them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he had
instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly
conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago
(a year before the date of the letters) she had married, against the
wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious character; in
fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was
the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the
capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother,
a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about
six years old.