t had for some time
faded, and the twilight had so deepened that she could no longer discern
the colours on the china figures on the chimneypiece or in the cabinets,
that the child returned to the housekeeper's room to find her mother.

To her she related, after some prattle about the china, and the
pictures, and the Judge's two grand wigs in the dressing-room off the
library, an adventure of an extraordinary kind.

In the hall was placed, as was customary in those times, the sedan-chair
which the master of the house occasionally used, covered with stamped
leather, and studded with gilt nails, and with its red silk blinds down.
In this case, the doors of this old-fashioned conveyance were locked,
the windows up, and, as I said, the blinds down, but not so closely that
the curious child could not peep underneath one of them, and see into
the interior.

A parting beam from the setting sun, admitted through the window of a
back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the
chair, shone with a dull transparency through the crimson blind.

To her surprise, the child saw in the shadow a thin man, dressed in
black, seated in it; he had sharp dark features; his nose, she fancied,
a little awry, and his brown eyes were looking straight before him; his
hand was on his thigh, and he stirred no more than the waxen figure she
had seen at Southwark fair.

A child is so often lectured for asking questions, and on the propriety
of silence, and the superior wisdom of its elders, that it accepts most
things at last in good faith; and the little girl acquiesced
respectfully in the occupation of the chair by this mahogany-faced
person as being all right and proper.

It was not until she asked her mother who this man was, and observed her
scared face as she questioned her more minutely upon the appearance of
the stranger, that she began to understand that she had seen something
unaccountable.

Mrs. Carwell took the key of the chair from its nail over the footman's
shelf, and led the child by the hand up to the hall, having a lighted
candle in her other hand. She stopped at a distance from the chair, and
placed the candlestick in the child's hand.

"Peep in, Margery, again, and try if there's anything there," she
whispered; "hold the candle near the blind so as to throw its light
through the curtain."

The child peeped, this time with a very solemn face, and intimated at
once that he was gone.

"Look again, and