ot know," was the answer. "I hear a great many noises about the
house. Somebody comes in late at night. Perhaps it is Philip; but he
comes very softly in, wipes his feet very gently, like a clean thief,
and goes up stairs."

"O auntie!" said Kate, "you know you have got over all such fancies."

"They are not fancies," said Aunt Jane. "Things do happen in houses! Did
I not look under the bed for a thief during fifteen years, and find one
at last? Why should I not be allowed to hear something now?"

"But, dear Aunt Jane," said Kate, "you never told me this before."

"No," said she. "I was beginning to tell you the other day, but Ruth was
just bringing in my handkerchiefs, and she had used so much bluing,
they looked as if they had been washed in heaven, so that it was too
outrageous, and I forgot everything else."

"But do you really hear anything?"

"Yes," said her aunt. "Ruth declares she hears noises in those closets
that I had nailed up, you know; but that is nothing; of course she does.
Rats. What I hear at night is the creaking of stairs, when I know that
nobody ought to be stirring. If you observe, you will hear it too. At
least, I should think you would, only that somehow everything always
seems to stop, when it is necessary to prove that I am foolish."

The girls had no especial engagement that evening, and so got into a
great excitement on the stairway over Aunt Jane's solicitudes. They
convinced themselves that they heard all sorts of things,--footfalls on
successive steps, the creak of a plank, the brushing of an arm against a
wall, the jar of some suspended object that was stirred in passing. Once
they heard something fall on the floor, and roll from step to step; and
yet they themselves stood on the stairway, and nothing passed. Then
for some time there was silence, but they would have persisted in their
observations, had not Philip come in from Mrs. Meredith's in the midst
of it, so that the whole thing turned into a frolic, and they sat on the
stairs and told ghost stories half the night.

XVII. DISCOVERY.

THE next evening Kate and Philip went to a ball. As Hope was passing
through the hall late in the evening, she heard a sudden, sharp cry
somewhere in the upper regions, that sounded, she thought, like a
woman's voice. She stopped to hear, but there was silence. It seemed to
come from the direction of Malbone's room, which was in the third story.
Again came the cry, more gently, ending in