bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by
one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't
know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three,
until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck--in
other words, breaking his bell short off--and silencing that young
gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.

But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers
of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very
inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes
endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would
address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I
had painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master
B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose
that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with
no better behavior than would most unquestionably have brought him
and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance
in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also
suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those
contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the
disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?--I say I would
become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such
an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd
Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among
us like a parochial petrifaction.

Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most
discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an
usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with
her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the