Murrays to go to bed as soon as they were
ready; and they had done so, though they
could not sleep. And now, in the dead of
the night, she sat in their room, the candle
closely shaded and the door ajar, breathlessly
awaiting she knew not what. She
had, without saying anything about it,
brought with her one of her father's
pistols. The fire burned low and red, and
everything was profoundly still, when the
ominous creaking struck on their terrified
ears. Eleanor quickly seized her candle
and ran into the passage, followed by the
other two, who had instantly sprung out of
bed. Footsteps were distinctly audible
descending the stairs. " Who is there?"
demanded Eleanor. " Answer, or I shall fire! ' '
No voice replied. They held their candles
over the balustrade, but no one was to be
seen. At the same moment Lucy darted
from her room, and came down the corridor
to join the group. " Is it broken?" said
she, hurriedly.

"Broken? What?" Lucy ran past
them to the stairs, bidding them follow.

"Look here," said she, showing them
a thread, the two ends of which lay across
the stair. " I tied this to-night to the
balustrade, and fastened it into the wall at
the opposite side. You see it is broken in
two."

"My child," said Eleanor, "a cotton
thread might easily snap, merely from
being stretched too tight. That is no
proof of any one having passed by.
Indeed, I am certain nobody did, for I was
out on this landing before he could by any
possibility have got down-stairs, and I must
have seen him."

"How brave you are, Eleanor!" said
Isabel, glancing at the pistol, and thence
to her calm face; and shivering with fear
and cold she crept back to bed with her
sister. As she carefully bolted her door
inside, she could not repress an exclamation
of thanksgiving that this was to be
their last night in that dangerous house.

Eleanor now declared her conviction
that the mysterious noises were produced
by some occult vibration or echo, as is not
uncommonly the case in old houses, and
that they had nothing alarming in them.
Lucy, however, would not be persuaded.
Though she did not openly assert her
incredulity, she ventured by herself to the
terrible spot next night when all had
retired, and tied a pack-thread firmly to the
balustrade, fastening it with a tack to the
opposite wall. Waking in the morning
almost as soon as it was light, she immediately
ran to look at her trap, and hurried
back to Eleanor with the intelligence that
the packthread was broken!

"How those stairs creak at the end of
the passage!" said Eleanor to her maid, as
she was dressing her hair that morning.
She had chosen that moment because from
the position Mrs. Wilkins then occupied
behind her chair, her mistress could watch
the expression of her countenance in the
looking-glass. " I heard them creaking
quite loudly under somebody's footsteps
after I came up to bed last night. I can't
think what took any one that way."

"None does go that way, never;" said
Mrs. Wilkins, emphatically.

"It is not the proper way, certainly, as
there is the back-stair from the offices.
But I have heard persons going up, or
down, while the Miss Murrays were here."

"I'll undertake to say you were
mistaken, ma'am. Not a servant in the house
would go up or down them stairs after dark.
Not for a thousand pounds, ma'am."

"What do you mean, Wilkins?"

"I mean, ma'am, as they has a bad
name. Them's the parts that's haunted."

"Haunted! Rubbish. Who put that
into your head?"

"You may call it rubbish, Miss Fearon,"
said Wilkins, resentfully; " but words
can't alter things. Them stairs is haunted;
all that knows about the place will tell you
as good; Sarah, as lived here with a
former family, she know it well. But she
don't mind, because she says the ghost
never did no harm as long as it warn't
interfered with."

"I thought you had more sense,
Wilkins," was all Eleanor replied, as she left the
room to go down to breakfast. The thought,
however, did come across her that this
story had perhaps been impressed on the
minds of the other servants by Sarah, in
order to keep the coast clear for any operations
she might wish to carry on under
the rose. What these could be, Eleanor
could not divine, but she did not feel
altogether comfortable. A vague feeling of
suspicion and doubt took possession of her,
and, with that subtle infection which some
attribute to animal magnetism, her uneasiness
seemed gradually to spread through
the whole family: the colonel alone remaining
unaffected by it. Her sisters became
silent and abstracted, as if always on the
watch. The maids went about in pairs,
and were found holding whispered
colloquies behind doors. The butler, under
pretence of black-beetles in the pantry,