thing?" cried Harold.

"How indeed!" said his father, rising; "that is just the puzzle. It will
take you years to find it out. Lindy, look into the morning-room in
about half an hour, and you will hear a tale whose lightest word will
harrow up thy soul, etc., etc."

As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though
not with the consequences predicted. Anything less suggestive of the
supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was
surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found
in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might
once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious
and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable
to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's
speech--

"---- treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?"

"Oh no, Sir George," answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and
stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; "which I
have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come
here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir,
the noises of a night is more than I can abear."

"Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet."

"No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the
very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest
sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?'