Slipping out of bed, I stole, barefooted as I was, out of my bed-room
and up the flight of stairs which led to the black door. Of ghosts in
the ordinary meaning of that word--in the meaning which it has for five
children out of six--I had no fear; my fears, such as they were, ran in
quite another groove. I went upstairs slowly, with shut eyes, counting
each stair as I put my feet on it from one up to ten. I knew that from
the tenth stair the streak of light, if there, would be visible. On the
tenth stair I opened my eyes. There was the thread of light shining
clear and steady under the black door. For a minute I stood looking at
it. In the intense silence the beating of my heart was painfully
audible. Grasping the banister with one hand, I went downstairs
backwards, step by step, and so regained the sanctuary of my own room.

I scarcely know in what terms to describe, or how to make sufficiently
clear, the strange sort of fascination there was for me in those nightly
rambles--in living perpetually on the edge of a mystery. While daylight
lasted the feeling slumbered within me; I could even take myself to task
for wanting to pry into a secret that evidently in nowise concerned me.
But as soon as twilight set in, and night's shadows began to creep
timidly out of their corners, so surely could I feel the spell working
within me, the desire creeping over me to pluck out the heart of the
mystery that lay hidden behind the black nail-studded door upstairs.
Sometimes I climbed the staircase at one hour, sometimes at another; but
there was no real sleep for me, nothing but fitful uneasy dozes, till
the brief journey had been made. After climbing to the tenth stair, and
satisfying myself that the light was there, I would creep back
noiselessly to bed, and fall at once into a deep dreamless sleep that
was often prolonged till late in the forenoon.

At length there came a night when the secret was laid bare, and the