ld Dorcas had her hands full, and
forgot her prisoner. My door was left unlocked. So, long after Colonel
Eglen had retired to rest, and when all the household were buried in
repose, I left my attic and crept down to the chamber of the guest,
with no other purpose than to make known my wrongs and appeal to his
compassion. I entered his chamber, approached his bed to speak to him,
when this hero of a hundred fields started up in a panic, and at the
sight of the pale woman who drew his curtains in the dead of the night,
he shrieked, violently rang his bell and fainted prone away."

"Ha! ha! ha! he could brave an army or march into a cannon's mouth
easier than meet a supposed denizen of another world! Well, Doctor
Johnson believed in ghosts," laughed Traverse.

"It remained for me to retreat as fast as possible to my room to avoid
the Le Noirs, who were hurrying with headlong speed to the
guest-chamber. They knew of course, that I was the ghost, although they
affected to treat their visitor's story as a dream. After that my
confinement was so strict that for years I had no opportunity of
leaving my attic. At last the strict espionage was relaxed. Sometimes
my door would be left unlocked. Upon one such occasion, in creeping
about in the dark, I learned, by overhearing a conversation between Le
Noir and his housekeeper, that my long lost daughter, Capitola, had
been found and was living at Hurricane Hall! This was enough to comfort
me for years. About three years ago the surveillance over me was so
modified that I was left again to roam about the upper rooms of the
house at will, until I learned that they had a new inmate, young Clara
Day, a ward of Le Noir! Oh, how I longed to warn that child to fly! But
I could not; alas, again I was restricted to my own room, lest I should
be seen by her. But again, upon one occasion, old Dorcas forgot to lock
my door at night. I stole forth from my room and learned that a young
girl, caught out in the storm, was to stay all night at the Hidden
House. Young girls were not plentiful in that neighborhood, I knew.
Besides, some secret instinct told me that this was my daughter: I knew
that she would sleep in the chamber under mine, because that was the
only habitable guest-room in the whole house. In the dead of night I
left my room and went below and entered the chamber of the young girl.
I went first to the toilet table to see if among her little girlish
ornaments, I could find any clue to