thought it must have been a hundred years or more--the abode of a judge
who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences and his
hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was against the
house itself she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could
inform her; but there was a general feeling that there was _something_,
and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater's
Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then she apologised to
Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.

'It is too bad of me, sir, and you--and a young gentlemen, too--if you
will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were my
boy--and you'll excuse me for saying it--you wouldn't sleep there a
night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell
that's on the roof!' The good creature was so manifestly in earnest, and
was so kindly in her intentions, that Malcolmson, although amused, was
touched. He told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest in him,
and added:

'But, my dear Mrs. Witham, indeed you need not be concerned about me! A
man who is reading for the Mathematical Tripos has too much to think of
to be disturbed by any of these mysterious "somethings", and his work is
of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow of his having any corner in his
mind for mysteries of any kind. Harmonical Progression, Permutations and
Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient mysteries for me!'
Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his commissions, and he went
himself to look for the old woman who had been recommended to him. When
he returned to the Judge's House with her, after an interval of a couple
of hours, he found Mrs. Witham herself waiting with several men and boys
carrying parcels, and an upholsterer's man with a bed in a car, for she
said, though tables and chairs might be all very well, a bed that hadn't