ur. All these simple natural things made me act so foolishly toward
a good friend, the sort of friend I have always known you to be. Let
me hear from you, and tell me what you people up North think of my
book. I give you my word that the 'Unknown Powers' shall never again
make me foolish enough to risk losing your friendship!

"Yours

"LUCIEN."

"So this is my story. Yes, 'there are more things in heaven and
earth--' But the workings of Chance are the strangest of all. And this
whisky is really very good. Here's to you."

BERNHARD SEVERIN INGEMANN

_THE SEALED ROOM_

For many years there stood in a side street in Kiel an unpretentious
old frame house which had a forbidding, almost sinister appearance,
with its old-fashioned balcony and its overhanging upper stories. For
the last twenty years the house had been occupied by a greatly
respected widow, Madame Wolff, to whom the dwelling had come by
inheritance. She lived there quietly with her one daughter, in
somewhat straitened circumstances.

What gave the house a mysterious notoriety, augmenting the sinister
quality in its appearance, was the fact that one of its rooms, a
corner room on the main floor, had not been opened for generations.
The door was firmly fastened and sealed with plaster, as well as the
window looking out upon the street. Above the door was an old
inscription, dated 1603, which threatened sudden death and eternal
damnation to any human being who dared to open the door or efface the
inscription. Neither door nor window had been opened in the two
hundred years that had passed since the inscription was put up. But
for a generation back or more, the partition wall and the sealed door
had been covered with wall paper, and the inscription had been almost
forgotten.

The room adjoining the sealed chamber was a large hall, utilized only
for rare important events. Such an occasion arose with the wedding of
the only daughter of the house. For that evening the great hall, as it
was called, was brilliantly decorated and illuminated for a ball. The
building had deep cellars and the old floors were elastic. Madame
Wolff had in vain endeavored to avoid using the great hall at all, for
the foolish old legend of the sealed chamber aroused a certain
superstitious dread in her heart, and she rarely if ever entered the
hall herself. But merry Miss Elizabeth, her pretty young daughter, was
passionately fond of dancing, and her mother had promised that