one of the secrets of the mysterious House.
Trottle's spirits began to rise again, and
he said " Yes," directly, with the confidence
of a man who knew all about it.

Benjamin's mother took the candle at once,
and lighted Trottle briskly to the stairs; and
Benjamin himself tried to follow as usual.
But getting up several nights of stairs, even
helped by the bannisters, was more, with his
particular complaint, than he seemed to feel
himself inclined to venture on. He sat down
obstinately on the lowest step, with his head
against the wall, and the tails of his big great
coat spreading out magnificently on the
stairs behind him and above him, like a dirty
imitation of a court lady's train.

"Don't sit there, dear," says his affectionate
mother, stopping to snuff the candle on the
first landing.

"I shall sit here," says Benjamin,
agravating to the last, " till the milk comes in the
morning."

The cheerful old woman went on nimbly
up the stairs to the first-floor, and Trottle
followed, with his eyes and ears wide open.
He had seen nothing out of the common in
the front parlour, or up the staircase, so far.
The House was dirty and dreary and
close-smelling—but there was nothing about it to
excite the least curiosity, except the faint
scraping sound, which was now beginning to
get a little clearer—though still not at all
loud—as Trottle followed his leader up the
stairs to the second floor.

Nothing on the second-floor landing, but
cobwebs above and bits of broken plaster
below, cracked off from the ceiling.
Benjamin's mother was not a bit out of breath, and
looked all ready to go to the top of the
monument if necessary. The faint scraping sound
had got a little clearer still; but Trottle was
no nearer to guessing what it might be, than
when he first heard it in the parlour
downstairs.

On the third, and last, floor, there were
two doors; one, which was shut, leading into
the front garret; and one, which was ajar,
leading into the back garret. There was a loft
in the ceiling above the landing; but the
cobwebs all over it vouched sufficiently for its
not having been opened for some little time.
The scraping noise, plainer than ever here,
sounded on the other side of the back garret
door; and, to Trottle's great relief, that was
precisely the door which the cheerful old
woman now pushed open.

Trottle followed her in; and, for once in
his life, at any rate, was struck dumb with
amazement, at the sight which the inside of
the room revealed to him.

The garret was absolutely empty of
everything in the shape of furniture. It must
have been used, at one time or other, by
somebody engaged in a profession or a trade
which required for the practice of it a great
deal of light; for the one window in the room
which looked out on a wide open space at the
back of the house, was three or four times as
large, every way, as a garret-window usually
is. Close under this window, kneeling on
the bare boards with his face to the door,
there appeared, of all the creatures in the
world to see alone at such a place and at
such a time, a mere mite of a child—a little,
lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who could
not at the most, have been more than five
years old. He had a greasy old blue shawl
crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to
keep the ends from the ground, into a great
big lump on his back. A strip of something
which looked like the remains of a woman's
flannel petticoat, showed itself under the
shawl, and, below that again, a pair of rusty
black stockings, worlds too large for him,
covered his legs and his shoeless feet. A pair
of old clumsy muffetees, which had worked
themselves up on his little frail red arms to
the elbows, and a big cotton nightcap that
had dropped down to his very eyebrows,
finished off the strange dress which the poor
little man seemed not half big enough to fill
out, and not near strong enough to walk
about in.

But there was something to see even more
extraordinary than the clothes the child was
swaddled up in, and that was the game which
he was playing at, all by himself; and which,
moreover, explained in the most unexpected
manner the faint scraping noise that had
found its way down-stairs, through the
half-opened door, in the silence of the empty
house.

It has been mentioned that the child was
on his knees in the garret, when Trottle first
saw him. He was not saying his prayers,
and not crouching down in terror at being
alone in the dark. He was, odd and
unaccountable as it may appear, doing nothing
more or less than playing at a charwoman's
or housemaid's business of scouring the floor.
Both his little hands had tight hold of a
mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly any
bristles left in it, which he was rubbing
backwards and forwards on the boards, as
gravely and steadily as if he had been at
scouring-work for years, and had got a large
family to keep by it. The coming-in of
Trottle and the old woman did not startle or
disturb him in the least. He just looked up
for a minute at the candle, with a pair of
very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on
with his work again, as if nothing had
happened. On one side of him was a
battered pint saucepan without a handle, which
was his make-believe pail; and on the other
a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which
stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After
scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he
took the bit of rag, and mopped up, and
then squeezed make-believe water out into
his make-believe pail, as grave as any judge
that ever sat on a Bench. By the time he
thought he had got the floor pretty dry, he
raised himself upright on his knees, and blew