nyman, a draft for a large sum, which
she carried to a banker in the town, and requested to have it cashed.
She received a considerable portion of the money in silver, and, as
she had several calls to make, she requested the banker to send the
money in a parcel to her house. The parcel was committed to the care
of a porter; and on the lady inquiring whether he understood from her
directions the place to which he was to proceed, the man replied that
he was perfectly aware of the place described--that it was called the
"Haunted House." She paid little attention to his remarks at the time,
but a few weeks afterwards his words were recalled to her recollection
in a manner that surprised her. The housekeeper came to Lady Pennyman,
and said that two of the servants, who had accompanied her ladyship
from England, had that morning given warning, and expressed a
determination to quit her ladyship's service, on account of being
terrified, night after night, by mysterious voices in their
apartments. This caused her ladyship, who was a woman of strong nerve
and an unbeliever in all that related to ghosts and haunted houses, to
sleep in a room evacuated by one of the servants, hoping that, by so
doing, her domestics would change their minds and remain. She was
greatly surprised to see in the room a large iron cage, and much
astonished to hear the legend respecting it. It was related that a
late proprietor of the house, a young man of great property, had in
his minority been confined in that apartment by an uncle, his
guardian, until the privations and divers acts of cruelties he was
exposed to ended fatally. Often had the youth been kept for days in
the iron cage without food. The unfeeling relative inherited the
nephew's wealth, but, like all ill-gotten gear, it did not bring
happiness. Frightful dreams and dreadful sights compelled the uncle to
leave the mansion, where he had murdered by inches a comely, docile
young man, once the comfort of a fond mother and loving father. For a
few nights nothing of an alarming nature occurred; she began to hope
that confidence would be restored in her household, and that she would
be enabled to return in peace to her own proper sleeping apartment.
Her expectations were not fulfilled. One night she was awakened by the
sound of footsteps in the haunted chamber, generally known as the
"cage chamber," while her son, a young man, who had just returned from
sea, was annoyed by loud knocking at his bed