income of aunt and niece rose to two hundred and sixty-five pounds a
year, which made a very material difference to Miss Blake.

When we could not let the house, or when the payment of the rent was in
dispute, Mr. Craven advanced the lady various five and ten pound notes,
which, it is to be hoped, were entered duly to his credit in the Eternal
Books. In the mundane records kept in our offices, they always appeared
as debits to William Craven's private account.

As for the young men about our establishment, of whom I was one, we
anathematised that house. I do not intend to reproduce the language we
used concerning it at one period of our experience, because eventually
the evil wore itself out, as most evils do, and at last we came to look
upon the desirable residence as an institution of our firm--as a sort of
_cause celebre_, with which it was creditable to be associated--as a
species of remarkable criminal always on its trial, and always certain
to be defended by Messrs. Craven and Son.

In fact, the Uninhabited House--for uninhabited it usually was, whether
anyone was answerable for the rent or not--finally became an object of
as keen interest to all Mr. Craven's clerks as it became a source of
annoyance to him.

So the beam goes up and down. While Mr. Craven pooh-poohed the
complaints of tenants, and laughed at the idea of a man being afraid of
a ghost, we did not laugh, but swore. When, however, Mr. Craven began to
look serious about the matter, and hoped some evil-disposed persons were
not trying to keep the place tenantless, our interest in the old house
became absorbing. And as our interest in the residence grew, so,
likewise, did our appreciation of Miss Blake.