crow
that rung over the fields. At the sound, the old man slowly rose and
took down his hat from the peg; the door opened and closed after him;
he was heard to go slowly down the staircase--tramp--tramp--tramp!
--and when he had got to the bottom, all was again silent. Dolph lay
and listened earnestly; counted every footfall; listened and listened
if the steps should return--until, exhausted by watching and
agitation, he fell into a troubled sleep.

Daylight again brought fresh courage and assurance. He would fain have
considered all that had passed as a mere dream; yet there stood the
chair in which the unknown had seated himself; there was the table on
which he had leaned; there was the peg on which he had hung his hat;
and there was the door, locked precisely as he himself had locked it,
with the chair placed against it. He hastened down-stairs and examined
the doors and windows; all were exactly in the same state in which he
had left them, and there was no apparent way by which any being could
have entered and left the house without leaving some trace behind.
"Pooh!" said Dolph to himself, "it was all a dream;"--but it would not
do; the more he endeavoured to shake the scene off from his mind, the
more it haunted him.

Though he persisted in a strict silence as to all that he had seen or
heard, yet his looks betrayed the uncomfortable night that he had
passed. It was evident that there was something wonderful hidden under
this mysterious reserve. The doctor took him into the study,--locked
the door, and sought to have a full and confidential communication;
but he could get nothing out of him. Frau Ilsy took him aside into the
pantry, but to as little purpose; and Peter de Groodt held him by the
button for a full hour in the church-yard, the very place to get at
the bottom of a ghost story, but came off not a whit wiser than the
rest. It is always the case, however, that one truth concealed makes a
dozen current lies. It is like a guinea locked up in a bank, that has
a dozen paper representatives. Before the day was over, the
neighbourhood was full of reports. Some said that Dolph Heyliger
watched in the haunted house with pistols loaded with silver bullets;
others, that he had a long talk with the spectre without a head;
others, that Doctor Knipperhausen and the sexton had been hunted down
the Bowery lane, and quite into town, by a legion of ghosts of their
customers. Some shook their heads, and thought it a shame