difference was that Trottle
introduced his manuscript under the name of a Report.

TROTTLE'S REPORT

The curious events related in these pages would, many of them, most
likely never have happened, if a person named Trottle had not presumed,
contrary to his usual custom, to think for himself.

The subject on which the person in question had ventured, for the first
time in his life, to form an opinion purely and entirely his own, was one
which had already excited the interest of his respected mistress in a
very extraordinary degree. Or, to put it in plainer terms still, the
subject was no other than the mystery of the empty House.

Feeling no sort of objection to set a success of his own, if possible,
side by side with a failure of Mr. Jarber's, Trottle made up his mind,
one Monday evening, to try what he could do, on his own account, towards
clearing up the mystery of the empty House. Carefully dismissing from
his mind all nonsensical notions of former tenants and their histories,
and keeping the one point in view steadily before him, he started to
reach it in the shortest way, by walking straight up to the House, and
bringing himself face to face with the first person in it who opened the
door to him.

It was getting towards dark, on Monday evening, the thirteenth of the
month, when Trottle first set foot on the steps of the House. When he
knocked at the door, he knew nothing of the matter which he was about to
investigate, except that the landlord was an elderly widower of good
fortune, and that his name was Forley. A small beginning enough for a
man to start from, certainly!

On dropping the knocker, his first proceeding was to look down cautiously
out of the corner of his right eye, for any results which might show
themselves at the kitchen-window. There appeared at it immediately the
figure of a woman, who looked up inquisitively at the stranger on the
steps, left the window in a hurry, and came back to it with an open
letter in her hand, which she held up to the fading light. After looking
over the letter hastily for a moment or so, the woman disappeared once
more.

Trottle next heard footsteps shuffling and scraping along the bare hall
of the house. On a sudden they ceased, and the sound of two voices--a
shrill persuading voice and a gruff resisting voice--confusedly reached
his ears. After a while, the voices left off speaking--a chain was
undone, a bolt drawn back--the door opened--and Tr