balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s bell
away and balked the ringing, and if they could
suppose that that confounded boy had lived
and died, to clothe himself with no better
behaviour than would most unquestionably have
brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-
broom into close acquaintance in the present
imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose
a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable
by those contemptible means of counteracting
and limiting the powers of the disembodied
spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?— I say I
would become emphatic and cogent, not to say
rather complacent, in such an address, when it
would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd
Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward,
and glaring among us like a parochial
petrifaction.

Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute
of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to
say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic
temperament, or what else was the matter with
her, but this young woman became a mere
Distillery for the production of the largest and
most transparent tears I ever met with.
Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar
tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they
didn't fall, but hung upon her face and nose.
In this condition, and mildly and deploringly
shaking her head, her silence would throw me
more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could
have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of
money. Cook, likewise, always covered me
with confusion as with a garment, by neatly
winding up the session with the protest that
the Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly
repeating her last wishes regarding her silver
watch.

As to our nightly life; the contagion of suspicion
and fear was among us, and there is no
such contagion under the sky. Hooded woman?
According to the accounts, we were in a perfect
Convent of hooded women. Noises? With
that contagion down stairs, I myself have sat in
the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard
so many and such strange noises, that they
would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed
it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try
this in bed, in the dead of the night; try this at
your own comfortable fireside, in the life of the
night. You can fill any house with noises, if
you will, until you have a noise for every nerve
in your nervous system.

I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear
was among us, and there is no such contagion
under the sky. The women (their noses in a
chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts),
were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and
ready to go off with hair-triggers. The two
elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions
that were considered doubly hazardous,
and she always established the reputation of
such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If
Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we
knew we should presently hear a bump on the
ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that
it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
about the house, administering a touch of his art
which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to every
domestic he met with.

It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain
to be frightened, for the moment in one's own
person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl. It
was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental
discord on the piano, that Turk always howled
at particular notes and combinations. It was
in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells,
and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave,
to have it down inexorably and silence it. It was
in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the
well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and
recesses. We changed servants, and it was no
better. The new set ran away, and a third set
came, and it was no better. At last, our
comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised
and wretched, that I one night dejectedly said
to my sister: "Patty, I begin to despair of
our getting people to go on with us here, and I
think we must give this up."

My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit,
replied. "No, John, don't give it up. Don't be
beaten, John. There is another way."

"And what is that?" said I.

"John," returned my sister, "if we are not
to be driven out of this house, and that for no
reason whatever, that is apparent to you or
me, we must help ourselves and take the house
wholly and solely into our own hands."

"But, the servants," said I.

"Have no servants," said my sister, boldly.

Like most people in my grade of life, I had
never thought of the possibility of going on
without those faithful obstructions. The
notion was so new to me when suggested, that
I looked very doubtful.

"We know they come here to be frightened
and infect one another, and we know they are
frightened and do infect one another," said my
sister.

"With the exception of Bottles," I observed,
in a meditative tone.

(The deaf stableman. I kept him in my
service, and still keep him, as a phenomenon of
moroseness not to be matched in England.)

"To be sure, John," assented my sister;
"except Bottles. And what does that go to prove?
Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless
he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has
Bottles ever given, or taken! None."

This was perfectly true; the individual in
question having retired, every night at ten o'clock,
to his bed over the coach-house, with no other
company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That
the pail of water would have been over me, and the
pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without
announcement in Bottles's way after that minute,
I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth
remembering. Neither had Bottles ever taken
the least notice of any of our many uproars. An
imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at
his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon,
and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put
another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.