transcendantly dismal. The slowly changing
shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were
doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-
placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It
was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there
was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy
victim of that indescribable decay which settles
on all the work of man's hands whenever it is
not turned to man's account. The kitchens and
offices were too large, and too remote from each
other. Above stairs and below, waste tracks of
passage intervened between patches of fertility
represented by rooms ; and there was a mouldy
old well with a green growth upon it, hiding,
like a murderous trap, near the bottom of the
back-stairs, under the double row of bells.
One of these bells was labelled, on a black
ground in faded white letters, MASTER B.
This, they told me, was the bell that rang the
most.

"Who was Master B.?" I asked. "Is it
known what he did while the owl hooted?"

"Rang the bell," said Ikey.

I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity
with which this young man pitched his fur
cap at the bell, and rang it himself. It was a
loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very
disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed
according to the names of the rooms to which
their wires were conducted: as "Picture
Room," "Double Room," "Clock Room," and
the like. Following Master B.'s bell to its
source, I found that young gentleman to have
had but indifferent third-class accommodation in
a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a
corner fireplace which Master B. must have
been exceedingly small if he were ever able to
warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a
pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb.
The papering of one side of the room had dropped
down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering
to it, and almost blocked up the door. It
appeared that Master B. in his spiritual condition,
always made a point of pulling the paper
down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could
suggest why he made such a fool of himself.

Except that the house had an immensely large
rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries.
It was moderately well furnished, but sparely.
Some of the furniture — say, a third — was as old
as the house; the rest, was of various periods
within the last half century. I was referred to
a corn-chandler in the market-place of the
county-town to treat for the house. I went
that day, and I took it for six months.

It was just the middle of October when I
moved in with my maiden sister (I venture to
call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very handsome,
sensible, and engaging). We took with
us, a deaf stable-man, my bloodhound Turk, two
woman servants, and a young person called an
Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant
last enumerated, who was one of the Saint
Lawrence's Union Female Orphans, that she
was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.

The year was dying early, the leaves were
falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we
took possession, and the gloom of the house
was most depressing. The cook (an amiable
woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into
tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested
that her silver watch might be delivered over to
her sister (2, Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's
Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything
happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the
housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the
greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never
been in the country, alone was pleased, and
made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the
garden outside the scullery window, and rearing
an oak.

We went, before dark, through all the natural—
as opposed to supernatural — miseries
incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports
ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in
volumes, and descended from the upper rooms.
There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander
(which failed to surprise me, for I don't know
what it is), there was nothing in the house, what
there was, was broken, the last people must
have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of
the landlord be? Through these distresses, the
Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary. But,
within four hours after dark we had got into a
supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen
"Eyes," and was in hysterics.

My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting
strictly to ourselves, and my impression was,
and still is, that I had not left Ikey, when he
helped to unload the cart, alone with the
women, or any one of them, for one minute.
Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had "seen
Eyes" (no other explanation could ever be
drawn from her), before nine, and by ten o'clock
had had as much vinegar applied to her as would
pickle a handsome salmon.

I leave a discerning public to judge of my
feelings, when, under these untoward circumstances,
at about half-past ten o'clock Master
B.'s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner,
and Turk howled until the house resounded
with his lamentations!

I hope I may never again be in a state of
mind so unchristian as the mental frame in
which I lived for some weeks, respecting the
memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung
by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other
accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause,
sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion,
I don't know; but, certain it is, that it did ring,
two nights out of three, until I conceived the
happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck—in
other words, breaking his bell short off—and
silencing that young gentleman, as to my
experience and belief, for ever.

But, by that time, the Odd Girl had
developed such improving powers of catalepsy,
that she had become a shining example of that
very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen,
like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on
the most irrelevant occasions. I would address
the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to
them that I had painted Master B.'s room and