e reached the top of the stairs,
in coming up, he remembered that he had not turned the outside damper
properly, and went back to do it.

"I wasn't gone three minutes, sir, and when I came back there lay the
letter, right side up, square in the middle of the stairs; and I'd take my
Bible oath, sir, as 'twan't there when I went down."

"Who was in the hall when you went down, Robert?" said my uncle sternly.

"Nobody, sir. Every servant in the house had gone to bed, except Jane" (my
aunt's maid), "and she was going up the stairs over my head, sir, when I
first went down into the cellar. I know she was, sir, for she called
through the stairs to me, and she says, 'Master'll hear you, Robert.' You
see, sir, Jane and me didn't know as it was so late, and we was frightened
when we heard the clock strike half-past eleven."

"That will do, Robert," said Uncle Jo. "You can go," and Robert
disappeared, relieved but puzzled. There seemed no possible explanation of
the appearance of the letter there and then, except that hands had placed
it there during the brief interval of Robert's being in the cellar. There
were no human hands in the house which could have done it. Was a restless
ghost wandering there, bent on betraying poor Esther's secrets to
strangers? What did it, what could it mean?

"Will you read this one with me, Nell?" said my uncle, turning it over
reverently and opening it.

"No," I said, "but I will watch you read it;" and I sat down on the floor
at his feet.

The letter was very short; he read it twice without speaking; and then
said, in an unsteady voice: "This is an earlier letter than the other, I
think. This is a joyous one; poor Esther! I believe I know her whole
story. But the mystery is inexplicable! I would take down these walls if I
thought I could get at the secret."

Long past midnight we sat and talked it all over; and racked our brains in
vain to invent any theory to account for the appearance of the letters on
that cellar stairway. My uncle's tender interest in the poor dead Esther
was fast being overshadowed by the perplexing mystery.

A few days after this, Mary the cook found another of the letters when she
first went down-stairs in the morning, and Robert placed it by my uncle's
plate, with the rest of his mail. It was the strangest one of all, for
there was not a word of writing in it that could be read. It was a foreign
letter; some lines of the faded old postmarks were still visible on t