oors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.

The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house,--we
went into the blind, dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the
floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a
trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed
down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended
into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected. In
this room there had been a window and a flue, but they had been
bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help of candles we
examined this place; it still retained some mouldering
furniture,--three chairs, an oak settle, a table,--all of the fashion
of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the
wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a
man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years
ago by a gentleman of some rank; costly steel buckles and buttons,
like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword; in a
waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now
blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver
coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment
long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron
safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to
get picked.

In this safe were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.
They contained colorless, volatile essences, of the nature of which I
shall only say that they were not poisons,--phosphor and ammonia
entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass
tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of
rock-crystal, and another of amber,--also a loadstone of great power.

In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a
man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven
or forty-eight. It was a remarkable face,--a most impressive face. If
you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving
in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better
idea of that countenance tha