, I have always refused to have his sex in the house, and I
tell you, frankly, that I consider it hardly human. If this girl of
yours, however, and the elderly female whom, you say, she expects to
join her in a few days, will make themselves generally useful about the
house, and try to be companions to me, I can give them the very room
where SKAMMERHORN died."

Perceiving that FLORA turned pale, her guardian whispered to her that
she would not be alone in the room, at any rate; and then respectfully
asked whether the late Mr. SKAMMERHORN had ever been seen around the
house since his death?

"To be frank with you," answered the widow, "I did think that I came
upon him once in the closet, with his back to me, as often I'd seen the
weak creature in life going after a bottle on the top shelf. But it was
only his coat hanging there, with his boots standing below and my muff
hanging over to look like his head."

"You think, then," said Mr. DIBBLE, inquiringly, "that it is such a room
as two ladies could occupy, without awaking at midnight with a strange
sensation and thinking they felt a supernatural presence?"

"Not if the bed was rightly searched beforehand, and all the joints well
peppered with magnetic powder," was the assuring answer.

"Could we see the room, madam?"

"If the shutters were open you could; as they're not;" returned the
widow, not offering to stir; "but ever since SKAMMERHORN, starting up
with a howl, said 'Here he comes again, red-hot!' and tried to jump out
of the window, I've never opened them for any single man, and never
shall. I couldn't bear it, DIBBLE, to see one of your sex in that room
again, and hope you will not insist."

Broken in spirit as he was by preceding humiliations, the old lawyer had
not the heart to contest the point, and it was agreed, that, upon the
arrival of Miss CAROWTHERS from Bumsteadville, she and FLORA should
accept the memorable room in question.

Upon their way back to the hotel, guardian and ward met Mr. BENTHAM,
who, from the moment of becoming a character in their Story, had been
possessed with that mysterious madness for open-air exercise which
afflicted every acquaintance of the late EDWIN DROOD, and now saluted
them in the broiling street and solemnly besought their company for a
long walk. "It has occurred to me," said the Comic Paper man, who had
resumed his black worsted gloves, "that Mr. DIBBLE and Miss POTTS may be
willing to aid me in walking-off some