certainly did not succeed in realising all
that he was supposed to have acquired. It was wonderful that with his
large income he left so little. So, we all thought that some hoard
locked by this key contained the missing treasure; my father's habitual
taciturnity, and secretiveness favouring this idea. But, nowhere could
the lock to fit it be found; nowhere either at banks or lawyers or
anywhere about our old house in Burlington Street or at Albury, appeared
the chest or cupboard containing the fancied accumulations; and to this
hour, June 12, 1873, nearly thirty years after my father's sudden death,
has the mystery not been cleared up. Once, on an occasion of a
spiritualistic _seance_ at Mr. Carter Hall's, I handed the said key to
Mr. Home when entranced, and he shuddered at it, and uttered the name
'Elizabeth Henderson,'--which I thought at the time a bad guess, as one
utterly unknown to me: but oddly enough it proved to be the name of the
Queen's housekeeper at Windsor. However, on inquiry nothing further came
of this, for she was not in office when my father died at the Park.
To-day I have taken the key to a Miss Hudson, a clairvoyante, who never
saw me before, nor was told my name, nor my errand, except that I laid
that key silently before her. She can tell me very little, except that
the mystery is soon to be cleared up, and that certain spirits (from
description possibly my mother and brother William) much wish it. I gave
no sort of clues, but the medium guessed at my father's character, and
at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding
of it in some 'bank,'--whether underground or at a banker's did not
appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'--one 'Daisy, an Indian
papoose'--says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am
urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable
woman of about thirty,--living in a lodging near Bloomsbury
Square,--utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,--said (in her
spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, and was
inspired by two spirits, one of the fair and lively sort all in white,
and the other an old philosopher--a strange guess at my mixed medley of
writings. Miss Hudson promised me that I should soon know the secret of
the key, because the spirits wished it, and because there was a blue
magnetic circle round the key."

* * * * *

_P.S._--It is only proper to st