ghtened, and now concluded that the child
must have seen the same ghost that had just appeared to believe so; for
the face, figure, and dress described by the child were awfully like
Pyneweck; and this certainly was not he.

Very much scared and very hysterical, Mrs. Carwell ran down to her room,
afraid to look over her shoulder, and got some companions about her, and
wept, and talked, and drank more than one cordial, and talked and wept
again, and so on, until, in those early days, it was ten o'clock, and
time to go to bed.

A scullery maid remained up finishing some of her scouring and
"scalding" for some time after the other servants--who, as I said, were
few in number--that night had got to their beds. This was a low-browed,
broad-faced, intrepid wench with black hair, who did not "vally a ghost
not a button," and treated the housekeeper's hysterics with measureless
scorn.

The old house was quiet now. It was near twelve o'clock, no sounds were
audible except the muffled wailing of the wintry winds, piping high
among the roofs and chimneys, or rumbling at intervals, in under gusts,
through the narrow channels of the street.

The spacious solitudes of the kitchen level were awfully dark, and this
sceptical kitchen-wench was the only person now up and about the house.
She hummed tunes to herself, for a time; and then stopped and listened;
and then resumed her work again. At last, she was destined to be more
terrified than even was the housekeeper.

There was a back kitchen in this house, and from this she heard, as if
coming from below its foundations, a sound like heavy strokes, that
seemed to shake the earth beneath her feet. Sometimes a dozen in
sequence, at regular intervals; sometimes fewer. She walked out softly
into the passage, and was surprised to see a dusky glow issuing from
this room, as if from a charcoal fire.

The room seemed thick with smoke.

Looking in she very dimly beheld a monstrous figure, over a furnace,
beating with a mighty hammer the rings and rivets of a chain.

The strokes, swift and heavy as they looked, sounded hollow and distant.
The man stopped, and pointed to something on the floor, that, through
the smoky haze, looked, the thought, like a dead body. She remarked no
more; but the servants in the room close by, startled from their sleep
by a hideous scream, found her in a swoon on the flags, close to the
door, where she had just witnessed this ghastly vision.

Startled by the