L READS "THE CREAKING OF THE STAIRS"

"After four years of luxury at the Capital there came a most disastrous
change in the Administration and I lost my rather exalted position under
the government. This was all the greater shock, for I had cherished the
comforting idea that I was protected to some extent by the Civil Service
law. However, when I recovered from the first effects of the blow I
looked the situation squarely in the face, and was content with a stray
crumb which fell from the opposition table. I had still some influence
to command, and after superhuman exertion managed to secure a
twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship.

"My wife, always cheerful under the most trying circumstances, was fully
equal to this occasion.

"'Well, my love,' said she, 'of course we must give up everything here,
and that will be a little trying for a while, I'll admit, but we should
be thankful that you are not thrown out altogether,' adding with a tinge
of melancholy, 'I don't think, though, that I could bear to live in
Washington after the change. Suppose we try A---- for a while.'

"A---- is over in Maryland, about six miles from town, and very
convenient trains are run between the two places. One can live quite
comfortably there for very little, so my wife's suggestion was quickly
adopted.

"'It reminds me of dear, dear Salem,' she said some weeks later, 'and
rents are so cheap. Think of the ridiculously small price we pay for
this house.'

"'Suspiciously small, you mean,' said I gloomily, not at all reconciled
to my wife's choice of abode. But as my feeble protest was treated with
silence I held my peace. 'Anything for a quiet life' has ever been a
favorite conceit with me.

"Mrs. Ploat had taken an old-fashioned house in Queen Anne Street, large
enough for a family of twenty persons. Now, as my household consisted of
only my wife, her unmarried sister, and myself, I could not understand
what was wanted with such capacious quarters. But I had no say in the
matter. My wife fancied the house, it seemed to me, on account of its
colonial air, wide halls, huge high-ceilinged rooms, and general lack of
modern improvements.

"I never liked the house in Queen Anne Street, though this aversion was
apparently unreasonable, for we were cosy enough after the throes of
moving in and settling down were over. But it struck me from the start
that there was something decidedly uncanny about the place, and a vague
feeling of uneasiness bec