years before we took it, and the owner was glad
to put it in sufficient repair to ensure our remaining.
The sitting-rooms, on the ground floor,
were large, but low and rather gloomy; the
smaller we fitted up as our dining-parlour, and
the other we abandoned to the boys, to be their
carpenter's shop and private snuggery. My
drawing-room I made up-stairs, as far as possible
out of hearing of their sawing and hammering,
and a little closet opening from it, and
extending over the porch, John lined with shelves,
and dignified with the title of book-room.

Of our quarters I need say no more. The
boys' den is the most spacious apartment in
the house, and had always been used as the
principal apartment until we entered on
possession. The wall had been once coloured of
a pinky hue, and the panels moulded with gilding.
The lofty, narrow mantelshelf—supported on
carved pilasters, was coloured like the wall
which, on the left, extending to the back of the
room—was flush with it, and on the right,
extending to the windows, fell into a deep recess.
The windows looked into the garden; the door
opened into the hall, which was divided in the
middle with a screen to exclude draughts.

The landlord was agreeably surprised at our bidding
him not re-paper this room; but he was at the
same time astonished I did not prefer it for my
parlour. And we were equally astonished at
his inquiry if I was deterred from preferring it
because it had got a bad name in the local
traditions as being haunted. We had not heard of
its bad name, and naturally begged for explanation.
He told us that the last occupants were
an overworked London clergyman and his wife.
That to accommodate them during a long
summer, he had furnished this room and two
others; that the lady was comfortable and
contented, but that her husband, who was out of
health, took a fixed idea into his mind that a
female shadow, which was not his wife's,
constantly pervaded the room. He was most
sensitive to its presence at morning and evening
prayers. Often, at other times, when reading
a book or gazing meditatively into the fire of
nights, he felt it beside him; but when he bent
his eyes to discern it clearly, it was gone. By
degrees, as he recovered his strength and
mental tone, his spectral visitant came less
frequently, and before he returned to his town
duties in October, it had quite ceased to trouble
him, and he spoke of it himself as an hallucination
arising from a distressed brain. In popular
parlance, however, it had become a ghost,
and the Grange a haunted house.

The boys heard the story, and only liked their
den the better for it. For my part, I pray that
I may never come into that state of mind and
body when I shall imagine myself a ghost-seer.
For some weeks after they had made a Babel of
the empty room, I expected tales of wonder and
imagination to be brought to my ears; but none
were brought save of no cupboards, no shelves,
no anything but the floor on which to deposit
their precious belongings. Their father gave
them a shabby escritoire which he had bought
for an old song at a sale in the town, and a
Pembroke table with drawers, but still they were
not satisfied; and Willie, one morning, impatiently
struck the wall by the fireplace, wishing
that were cupboards. Most unexpectedly, it
gave back a hollow sound, and something like
plaster rattled down within. He struck again;
he listened; his brothers listened; they all struck,
and they all listened; they were sure the wall
was hollow; that there was a recess to correspond
spond with that on the other side of the fireplace,
which was only boarded up and canvassed.

It was a holiday, and it was rainy. They had
hours before them for investigation, and mischief,
and they set to work; carefully, at first,
and near the floor, but soon with greater boldness.
They cut out a section of the canvas, and
discovered that it was not plain joiner's work
behind, but panelling, like the rest of the room.
They ripped away the canvas from beside the
pilaster of the chimney, and espied hinges,
chinks—unmistakable evidences of a closet in
the wainscot large enough to appease their
most exorbitant longings for store-room. They
persevered in spite of choking dust and falling
plaster, ignorant of landlord's claims for dilapidation
and of their father's displeasure, and by
noon they had completely laid open the hidden
cupboard doors, and Willie had come to me for
some keys. I asked him what he wanted keys
for? He told me about the closet—such a large
double closet! I proposed to go and see it.
He begged me to stay where I was until they
had effected a clearance of the rubbish. My
suspicious and fears were roused, and I went at
once. Rubbish, indeed! The floor was littered
with torn canvas, and the air thick with the
powdery dust of the wall-colouring. An old
charwoman, Bridget Johnes, whom we
occasionally employed in the house, had preceded
me on the boys' petition to help them remove the
ruins, and there she stood agape, resting on her
broom, and crying, " Bless her life, if there was
not Madame Stéphanie's closet again!" The
boys eyed me a little anxiously as I remarked
that I did not know what their father and Mr.
Baxter, the landlord, might say, but Willie began
all the same to try the keys. The key in common
use for most of the other cupboards fitted this
lock; he turned it, and with a wrench pulled
open one leaf of the door: and, as he pulled,
out fell, with dry, light, jingling rattle, a skeleton
with a mass of tattered, colourless clothing still
enveloping it.

The curious investigator sprang fast enough
out of the way. I cannot tell what any of us
felt or said, but the first words I understood were
from the mouth of Bridget Johnes. She had
stepped across the floor, and was stooping to
examine a ring that hung on one finger of the
clenched skeleton hand. "It is poor Mam'selle
Elise," said she; " they told us she'd gone
home to France."

I sent one of the boys instantly to bring Mr.
Baxter; and, before he came, their father was on
the scene. The discovery was something more
than a nine days' wonder. There was a long