The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

OLD MRS JONES Mrs Riddell

There could not have been found in his parish, which was a large one, a prouder or happier man than Richard Tippens, on the day when he took possession of the house which had been tenanted by Dr Jones.

Never a better fellow drew breath than Mr Richard Tippens. A good son, a loving husband, a fond father, his worst enemy could only say of him he had two faults—one, a tendency to be extra generous; the other, a perhaps undue fondness for an extra glass. But, earning money by the pocketful, as Dick did in those days, when there were fewer cabs and buses than at present, no tramcars, no Metropolitan or daylight route railway, to be freehanded seemed a virtue rather than a sin; whilst a man who had to be out in all weathers, and the period of whose meals was as uncertain as the climate, could scarcely be blamed for yielding to the solicitations of sporting or commercial-gent fares, and his own inclination, in the matter of little ‘gos’ of rum and half-quarterns of gin, and whisky cold without, or with ‘just a drop of hot water and one lump of sugar, my dear, as my fingers is stiff with cold.’

Mr Tippens was a cheery fellow, with a jolly, honest, laughing face, merciful to the cattle he drove, proud of his newly-painted cab, of his silver-plated harness, of a fresh horse he had just bought, and—oh, far, far prouder of all—of having got the old house which Dr Jones lived in, for so many a long and wicked year, for a mere song in the way of rent. It was precisely the sort of place he had been looking out for, he could scarcely remember how long; an old-fashioned house—not a grand old-fashioned house altogether above their position, but a rambling, ramshackle building, with a wide staircase, and lots of cupboards, and plenty of rooms they could let off to great advantage, and large cellars, and a paved yard at the back, where were also stables, and coach-house, and lofts, and washhouse, and brew-house, and ever so many other odd little places, telling unconsciously of the time when people, and things, and ways were different from what they are now; when wood enough for the whole winter had to be laid in at once, and bread was baked at home, and flitches of bacon were laid in the racks, and such modern innovations as tradesmen calling every day for orders, ladies only spending about thirty minutes a week in their kitchens, and no mistress’s store-room, were matters still undreamt of.

‘It is a splendid house,’ Mr Richard Tippens joyfully exclaimed, when, opening the door with his own key, he walked into the premises with the old creature who was to do the repairs for him.

‘Fit for any gentleman,’ capped the person in question, the accuracy of whose ideas on any social subject of that sort was indeed open to doubt, for he had only one definite notion on earth, and that was beer. His point of view was the nearest tap, and any road which led to the desired haven seemed to him filled with better company than the Row in the season.

He had been in a yard where Dick Tippens, then owning no horses of his own, was fain to work under a cab proprietor.

‘I have known poor old Mickey,’ Dick was wont to say, ‘for a matter of thirty years, on and off, you know, and ever since I was as high as that,’ and the great burly fellow would indicate a height a child of five might have scoffed at. But Dick did not add how many a sixpence, and shilling, and half-crown, and good warm dinner had found their way to old Mickey since he met with the accident (when he was drunk) which made him for ever after a dependant on the charity of the ratepayers and the liberality of those who could remember him when he was earning from ‘thirty-three to forty bob a week, besides gettings.’ That Mickey, while in receipt of this princely income, might have put aside a trifle to help him over that rainy day, induced by ‘the cussedest brute that ever lashed out without a sign of warning,’ was an idea which never seemed to occur either to the various relieving officers he was under or to the many friends who ‘stood treat.’

Neither was any weight attached to the horse’s view of the question. How Michael himself would have liked his own toilet performed with the aid of a pitchfork, which was the implement he had taken up, apparently under the impression it was a curry-comb, nobody inquired. All that his own public considered was that Mickey, once the weekly recipient of ‘thirty-three to forty bob and gettings,’ which latter item probably amounted to as much more, had to go on the parish and feel thankful for half-crowns from the Board, and such odd jobs as Heaven, more merciful than the abhorred Board, put in his way.

For the rest he was a drunken, dissolute, lying, discontented carneying old vagabond, who thrived on the kindness and folly of men like Dick Tippens, who likewise was not laying by a farthing but spending such of his superfluous cash as did not go in the best of good eating and drinking and smoking in the purchase of useless articles of various kinds, in fine household linen and damask, in a large stock of clothes for himself, which he could not possibly wear out before they grew old-fashioned, in shawls and dresses for his wife, each and all destined eventually to find their way to the pawnbroker as surely and infallibly as the sparks fly upwards.

For apparently a mere trifle, ‘just a bite of food, or a half-pint of beer, or an old pair of cast-off boots, or a coat you don’t care to be seen about in any longer yourself, even in the worst of weather,’ thus, ‘poor old Mickey’; ‘or just whatever you are pleased to give me, or nothing at all, Mr Tippens, I’ll make the place clean and sweet for you. There is little here I can’t do, except maybe the roof and a bit of brick-laying, that needs standing on a high ladder, or the pipes mending, or the gutter seeing to; but leave that all to me, plenty will be glad to earn a shilling or two, and I know where to go to look for them; don’t you trouble yourself at all. Which had we best make a start with, the house, d’ye think, or the yard?’

Mr Tippens thought the house. Once he was on the premises he could see to a bit of the loft and stables himself, and give Mike a helping hand; and his wife was all agog to get in, and put the place to rights while the fine weather lasted; and he had some fresh lodgers now, only waiting till he could take them in; and the children, poor things, were wild at the thought of the yard and the out-buildings.

‘And fine children they are too,’ answered the worthy Michael; ‘but there, what would hinder them? You’re not an ill-favoured man yourself, Mr Tippens, and I mind the time when all the girls were setting their caps at you, and the like of your wife for beauty never stepped. The very sight of her seems to do my old eyes good, like the sunshine on a bright May morning. She always minds me somehow of primroses and violets and bluebells, and the scent of the wallflowers that used to grow along on the low wall of my father’s garden down in Surrey,’ and as he uttered these poetical similes, Michael’s watery eyes wistfully followed the movements of Mr Tippens’ right hand while it fumbled in his pocket for a shilling, to bestow on the ‘poor old fellow, who had neither chick nor child, nor one belonging to him.’

The expenditure of whitewash in that house was something awful; Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London could scarcely have required a larger outlay in whiting.

‘You have no idea,’ said Mike, ‘of the quantity of wash them ceilings needs’—which, indeed, Mr Tippens had not—floors, walls, and Mickey himself also received coat after coat; and the dust, according to the ex-helper’s account, was so awful he was forced to keep a pot of beer constantly beside him, in one of the cupboards, to take a sip of at frequent intervals to prevent his choking.

At last, however, even Mike felt it would be dangerous any longer to defer announcing the completion of the repairs. He was brought to this state of mind by a visit from Mrs Tippens, who, after declaring in tones not much like the birds in spring that she could have done the work herself in a quarter of the time, said, ‘Done or undone, she meant to have the “cleaning” begun on the following Monday,’ when she requested the favour of Mike’s room instead of his company.

She saw clearly enough that individual was in a fuddled state, and whether the intoxication was produced by beer, or gin, or whitewash, or the lead in the paint, did not signify to her; even the praise of her children only elicited the answer that they were ‘well enough,’ and a more elaborate tribute to her own charms failed to soften the asperity with which she told him to ‘hold his tongue.’

‘I expect that Mickey has taken you in nicely, Dick,’ she said to her husband that night.

‘Oh, it hasn’t cost me so much,’ answered Mr Tippens easily; ‘there was a whole lot of things to do.’

As indeed he found when the rainy months and the snow came, and the water poured from the spouts, all of which leaked, and the wet soaked through the broken tiles that had never been replaced; and it was found necessary to open all the drains.

Long before winter arrived, however, Mrs Tippens discovered that not a lock or bolt in the house worked properly; that the paint had only been smeared on the woodwork; that the whole of the repairs, in fact, had consisted in further dilapidation of the coats of Mr Mike’s stomach; and that almost all the money paid by her husband for ‘labour,’ ‘material,’ ‘extra help,’ ‘hire of ladders,’ ‘use of pulley,’ and so forth, had been spent over the counter of the ‘Guy Faux’ tavern, situated round a near and convenient corner.

Meeting Mike one day, her just indignation found utterance, and, with feminine frankness, she reproached him for having deceived a man who had been so kind to him as her husband. Mrs Tippens was in no sense of the word a shrew, but she could upon occasion speak out her mind, and on this occasion she did speak it very plainly.

Mike never attempted to deny the charge, he only tried to turn it into a victory by a strategic movement likely to divert her attention.

‘What was the use,’ asked the hoary sinner, ‘of spending good money fitting a house up like a palace I knew you would never be able to live in?’

‘What would hinder us living in it?’ retorted Mrs Tippens, more in the way of comment than inquiry.

‘What would hinder you?—Why old Mrs Jones, to be sure; she’ll never let anybody live in the house till her bones are dug up out of the hole where her husband buried her.’

‘Oh, don’t talk to me of your Mrs Joneses!’ exclaimed Mrs Tippens, to whom the name was evidently not new. ‘At any rate, I never did any harm to the woman—never saw her, to my knowledge, so it’s not likely she would come troubling me.’

‘She troubles everybody that tries to live m the house you’re so set up with. Why, the last people did not stop a fortnight. It’s well known she walks the place over, from the second floor down; and, if you take my advice, you won’t go into the back-cellar alone after night.’

It was Sunday evening. Mr Tippens sat on one side of the fire and his wife on the other. They had partaken of tea, and it was not yet quite time for supper; the children were abed, three of them in a large room at the end of the passage Dr Jones had used as a surgery, while the baby was, for a wonder, fast asleep in its cradle, which stood in a dark corner behind Mrs Tippens’ chair. The horses had long been fed and littered down. Mr Tippens always took a look at them last thing, but last thing would not be yet for an hour or more. The house was as quiet as the grave, and through the smoke caused by his pipe Richard Tippens, with a delightful sense of well-being, and doing, and feeling, dreamily regarded his wife, who was certainly an extremely pretty woman, possessing further the reputation of being an extraordinarily good manager; neat in her own person, she always kept her children clean and tidy and well dressed; her rooms were regularly swept and scrubbed, and hearthstoned and blackleaded; she mended her husband’s clothes, and sewed on his buttons, and with the help of a woman who came in to ‘chair,’ as it is generally called, did the family washing and the family ironing; she was a very fair cook, not in the least lazy—quite the contrary, indeed—and yet, if I may venture to say so, in the teeth of public opinion, which always favours women of her type, I do not think she was a good manager, for she spent up to the hilt of her income, whatever that might be. She was always considering how to increase her ‘gettings,’ but she never gave a thought as to how she might save them.

Her husband gave her a liberal allowance, and brought home from outlying regions, where he saw such articles marked up cheap, fowls, fish, necks of mutton, vegetables, and other welcome helps to house-keeping. She had a house full of regularly paying lodgers, who found their own latch-keys, and required no attendance. She took in needlework, at which, as she got it by favour, she was able to make a considerable amount of money—and yet, if she had told the truth to her own heart, she would have said, ‘We are not one bit better off than we were when Dick only gave me a pound certain every week, and paid the rent.’

It is a pity someone, thoroughly up in financial questions, does not inform us why uncertain incomes lead almost invariably to extravagant living.

Your true economist, your excellent manager, your incomparable financier, is a labourer at a given weekly wage, a clerk on starvation salary, the lady left with the poorest of limited incomes. The moment ‘gettings,’ in any shape, enter into the question economy retires, worsted, from the contest. ‘You have got so much to-day, you may get so much more to-morrow,’ that is the reasoning. Now, why cannot the ‘gettings’ be put aside? Why cannot they be left like an egg in the nest for more to be laid? We know, of course, they never are; but why is it?

Among my own somewhat varied acquaintances, I number, at this moment of writing, two persons—one, a lady whose income, all told, does not reach a hundred a year; on this amount she pays the rent of her rooms, she lives, she dresses; she is not young, and her health requires some few luxuries; yet she is never in debt, and she has always a trifle to spare for those who may be sick or sorry. The other is a youth who I do not think has yet counted eighteen summers; his health is perfect, his rank does not necessitate other than the most moderate expenditure for a bed; his hat covers his family; when he visits, his toilet is easily and perfectly made with a clean collar and a fancy tie; his weekly income has been from thirty to five-and-thirty shillings a week and ‘gettings’; and yet, lately, when he had been four days out of work, with the certainty of getting into work again on the next day but one, he had to pawn his watch!

Most certainly political economists of the age now coming towards us will find few more difficult questions to deal with than this of ‘gettings.’ Were an angel to descend from Heaven to-night and tell Mrs Tippens what I know, that ‘gettings’ had been the curse of herself, her husband, and her children, she would not believe him; so it would be worse than folly for me to speak—even if not cruel impertinence—now the inevitable end has come: the parish; the philanthropic society, the ever-decreasing bounty for which she is able to make interest; such casual help as she can get, and such work as she is able to obtain.

But no one that evening, looking at her and her husband, as they sat beside the fire, at the comfortable, well-furnished room, the bright blaze, the clean-swept hearth, could possibly have thought evil days were looming in the distance for both husband and wife. He, the picture of health and strength; she, a slight and still apparently quite young woman, with a refined style of beauty, and a cast of features altogether unusual in her rank. When her voice was not upraised and her temper tried, both of which had been the case during her encounter with that arch-hypocrite Mike, her mode of speaking accorded with the pure and delicate lines of her countenance. In truth, she had been well brought up, and from her youth knew how, with propriety, to address ladies—real ladies, as she was sometimes almost too careful to add; and since her marriage she had kept herself to herself; and in her own home, her children, her relations, and her husband, found all the interest and society she required.

‘Dick,’ she said, after they had sat in silence for some little time.

‘I’m here, Luce,’ he answered; ‘what is it, my girl?’

‘You never told me this house was haunted.’

‘I told you people said it was haunted,’ he answered, ‘and you laughed at the idea; because, as you wisely remarked, “when once people are buried they’ve done with this world, surely.” ’

‘But that’s just what we don’t know—whether old Mrs Jones was ever buried or not.’

‘We don’t know whether she is dead or not, for that matter.’

‘Then if she’s not dead, where can she be?’

‘And if Dr Jones isn’t dead, where can he be?’ retorted Mr Tippens.

‘There’s dreadful things said about this house, Dick.’

‘Well, you just turn a deaf ear to them, and they won’t break your night’s rest. What’s Dr and Mrs Jones to us? He was a bad man, we know; and she, if all accounts may be trusted, was a bit of a shrew, and held a tight grip on the money, which he married her for. He did not take her for her good looks, I’m sure; for a plainer, more ordinary woman you couldn’t have met in a day’s walk in London. She was more like a witch than anything else—a little bit of a woman, with eyes like black beads, and a face the colour of mahogany; but there—I’ve described her before, Luce, and I think we might find something pleasanter to talk about now.’

‘But they say, Dick—they do, indeed—she walks the house, and—’

‘Pack of rubbish,’ interrupted Mr Tippens warmly; ‘who says it—at least, who says it to you?’

‘Why, mostly everybody—the baker, and the bootmaker down the street, and Mike—’

‘She didn’t hinder him staying in the house, at any rate,’ commented Dick.

‘Well, Mr Mowder lived here, you know.’

‘And he was turned out because he wouldn’t pay a farthing of rent.’

‘He says,’ persisted Mrs Tippens resolutely, ‘there was always like a cold air in the passage.’

‘You can’t expect the hall to feel exactly sultry with those great underground kitchens and cellars. I’ve a mind to put a few spikes in the door, and so shut the whole of those caverns off the rest of the house.’

‘But then, Dick, dear, what should we and our lodgers do about coals?’

‘Aye, there you go,’ observed Dick. ‘Every woman’s alike; the moment a man makes a suggestion, she’s sure to raise some difficulty. Then I won’t nail up the door; will that meet your views, Mrs Tippens?’

‘Now, Dick, don’t let us quarrel,’ entreated his better half; ‘there was enough of quarrelling here, if all accounts be true, in the Joneses’ time, without our beginning the same game, and—’

He did not let her finish the sentence, he took his pipe out of his mouth, and drew his chair nearer to where she sat, and put his arm round her waist, and drew her head down on his shoulder, and stroked her hair tenderly, and said: ‘No fear of that, old girl—ghosts or no ghosts; Mrs Jones or Mrs Anybody else, we’ll not take to quarrelling. Only, you see, I don’t want you to be listening to foolish stories and the envious talk of people who, maybe, think we’re getting on a bit too fast in the world. The house suits me and my business well, and I can’t afford to have you set against it, and, likely as not, wanting to leave, and me bound for the rent for three years. Mind that, my lass,’ and he gave her a kiss so loud and hearty, neither of them heard the opening of the front door till the sound of several voices caused Mr Tippens to exclaim:

‘What noise is that, Luce?’

‘The Pendells coming in,’ she answered; ‘they’ve her brother and sister with them up from the country.’

‘It’s about getting on for supper time, then, isn’t it, Luce?’ asked Mr Tippens tentatively. He was always ready for his meals on a Sunday, perhaps because he did not take out his cab and had nothing to do.

‘Yes, I’ll bring it in now,’ answered his wife; and as she spoke she passed into a lean-to, opening off the sitting-room, which she had metamorphosed into a tiny kitchen, perhaps to avoid the dark loneliness of those underground regions Mr Tippens well described as caverns.

She had provided a nice little meal, and she looked pretty and graceful as she flitted backwards and forwards, fetching one dish and then another.

‘Why, girl, this is a supper fit for the Lord Mayor,’ said Mr Tippens, looking approvingly at the contents of the table; ‘I don’t think the Queen herself—’

What he was going to say concerning Victoria by the Grace of God will never now be known, for when he arrived at this point in his sentence there echoed through the silent house a shriek, which brought both husband and wife to their feet, followed by a thud, as of something heavy falling to the ground.

‘Lord bless and save us!’ exclaimed Mr Tippens, and seizing a light he rushed out into the passage, followed by bis wife.

It was a strangely built house; there were only six steps to the first landing, where was a cupboard in the wall which Mrs Pendell used as a sort of pantry; halfway down the landing there were three steps more, and then the flight that led direct to the rooms where the Pendells lived.

As Dick Tippens and his wife ran up the half-dozen steps leading from the hall, a posse of people came hurrying pell-mell from the upper part of the house. ‘What is it? What has happened? Is it thieves? Is the house on fire?’ No, the house was not on fire, neither had thieves set themselves at the unprofitable task of effecting an entry; it was only that on the landing Mrs Pendell lay in the deadest faint woman ever fell into, a large dish she had evidently just taken out of the cupboard smashed to atoms beside her, and the remnants of the joint the family had operated upon in the middle of the day a few steps down, where it had rolled when she dropped the dish.

Everything possible and impossible the house contained was brought to revive Mrs Pendell; everybody was talking at once, and each individual had some pet theory to account for the phenomenon.

‘I told her she was a-overdoing it,’ said her husband, a slow, florid, phlegmatic, pig-headed sort of man. ‘Didn’t I, Bill? Didn’t I say to her just on this side of Whitechapel Church, “You’ve been a-overdoing it, Mary, you’ll have a turn of them spasms to-morrow”?’

Meantime, the subject of these remarks had been carried into the inner chamber and laid on her bed, where every recognised experimental and favourite personal expedient was tried in order to restore her to consciousness; she was ‘poor deared,’ her dress was unfastened and her stays loosened, smelling salts of every degree of strength were held to her nostrils, burnt feathers thrust almost up her nose, her hands slapped, cold water dabbed on her forehead, an attempt made to get some brandy down her throat, with various other ingenious efforts at torture, which almost drove Mrs Tippens, who was in the main a very sensible woman, distracted.

‘If you’d only leave her to me and Susie,’ she said; ‘there’s not a breath of air in the room, with so many standing about the bed and the doorway. She’ll be right enough after a little, if you’ll only not crowd her, and let me open the windows.’

‘She’s right,’ observed Mr Pendell, from the doorway. ‘Come along, all of you, Mrs Tippens knows what’s what.’

Mrs Pendell, however, was so long in justifying this flattering eulogy in Mrs Tippens’ favour, that Susie, the sister, who had come up to see her, was just asking if it would not be better to send Bob for the nearest doctor, when Mrs Tippens, raising her hand to enforce silence, said:

‘Sh—sh—she’s coming to now.’

There was a pause, a pin might have been heard drop, so silent and eager and expectant were the two watchers; then Mrs Pendell, recovering, opened her eyes a very little, and Mrs Tippens, holding her left hand, and softly rubbing it, said:

‘Don’t be frightened, dear, it’s only me.’

‘What is it? Where am I?’ murmured Mrs Pendell, adding suddenly, with a gesture of the extremest terror, ‘Oh! I remember. Keep her away from me, Mrs Tippens! Mrs Tippens, won’t you keep her away—that dreadful woman, you know?’

‘She’s a bit light-headed,’ said her sister; ‘I’m sure Bob had better go for the doctor.’

‘I don’t think there’s any need,’ answered Mrs Tippens, quietly enough, though her very heart seemed to stand still at the words. ‘There’s nobody shall come near you, dear, but Susie and me. Don’t be looking about the room that way—indeed, there’s no one here but your sister and myself.’

‘She has long grey hair streaming over her shoulders. Oh, the wickedest face I ever did see! I know her well, don’t you, Mrs Tippens?’

‘Yes, yes, dear; but never mind her now; keep yourself quiet.’

‘She must be the smallest woman in the world,’ this after a moment’s silence; ‘when I turned from the cupboard I felt like a rush of cold air, and there she stood on the top step but one.’

‘I think she would be the better for some sort of quieting draught,’ remarked Mrs Tippens, sotto voce to Susan Hay—and it is no disparagement of a courageous woman’s courage to say, after Susie left the room she looked fearfully around, while Mrs Pendell rambled on about the dreadful sight which had struck her down like one dead.

‘I have seen people in their coffins, who didn’t look half so death-like,’ she whispered; ‘she was that dark, and her face and her eyes were so fierce, and her arms so shrivelled, and her hands so like claws going to make a clutch at me; and she had a red mark round her throat, as if she had been wearing a necklace too tight.’

‘Did she say anything to you?’ Mrs Tippens forced herself to ask.

‘No; she was just going to speak when I screamed out with horror. Shall I ever forget her?—ever—ever!’ and she buried her head despairingly in the pillow.

‘Well, Polly, lass, how do you find yourself now?’ said Mr Pendell, coming into the room at this juncture, and causing a welcome diversion, at least to Mrs Tippens’ fancy. ‘You’re getting all right now, aren’t you? Ah, I felt afraid what was coming; did I say to you, or did I not, on this side of Whitechapel Church, “You’ve been a-overdoing of it, Mary; you’ll have a turn of them spasms to-morrow”?’

For answer Mary only put her hand in her husband’s and lay strangely still and quiet.

‘Bob has gone for the doctor,’ proceeded Mr Pendell, nodding across at Mrs Tippens.

In replying, Mrs Tippens looked at the patient and then nodded back at him.

Before morning broke Mrs Pendell had brought a child prematurely into the world. That she lived and the baby lived the doctor assured Mr Pendell was owing entirely to Mrs Tippens’ extraordinary devotion and excellent nursing; and Mr Pendell declared solemnly to Mrs Tippens he would never forget her goodness—‘night or day, she had only to say what she wanted, and he would be quite at her service’—a promise he found it convenient to forget when evil days fell upon Dick and his wife.

While these events and exchanges of amenities were passing, there happened a curious experience to Mrs Tippens one night while she was off duty.

Her husband was out on ‘a late job,’ and had told her not to sit up for him; and Mrs Tippens having undressed and said her prayers, and placed a box of matches where she could instantly lay hand upon it, was about to blow out the candle and step into bed when from the little room at the end of the passage there came a chorus of ‘Mother! MOTHER! MOTHER!’ which caused her, without making any addition to her toilet beyond instinctively thrusting her bare feet into a pair of her husband’s slippers, to snatch up the candle and rush to the place where her children slept.

‘Now then, what is all this noise about?’ she asked, seeing they were every one alive and each sitting bolt upright in bed. Theoretically Mrs Tippens was nothing if not a disciplinarian, but the young ones twisted her round their little fingers for all that. ‘You’ll bring all the lodgers down; I have a great mind to give each of you a good whipping.’

‘There was a woman in the room, mamma!’ said Mrs Tippens’ second-born.

‘And she came and touched me,’ added the youngest of the trio.

‘Yes, that she did, I see her,’ exclaimed the eldest son; ‘a little woman with hair hanging about her like yours, only grey and not so long, and with eyes as black as Lucy’s new doll’s, the one Mr Pendell gave her, and as dark as that man with the white turban we saw in the Strand and—’

‘Hold your tongue this instant, never let me hear your nonsense again,’ interrupted Mrs Tippens angrily. ‘You had too much pudding for supper, that’s what’s the matter with you, and you got the nightmare and woke up thinking you saw all sorts of things.’

‘But we couldn’t all have had nightmares,’ persisted Dick, who was a sturdy lad, and his father’s pride and hope; ‘I saw her go up to Effie and lay her hand on her.’

‘It was cold too,’ supplemented the child.

‘And I saw her as well,’ capped Lucy, fearful of lagging behind the others in this little matter of renown and glory.

‘You are very naughty children,’ answered Mrs Tippens, in a superior sort of tone; then, descending to details, ‘is it so very likely, Dicky, you could see anyone in the dark.’

‘Oh, but she brought a light with her, a sort of a lamp.’

At this point Mrs Tippens collapsed. If old Mrs Jones were able, not merely to go wandering about a house for which she paid no rent or taxes, but also to find her own light, what other feat might that lady not be expected to perform? ‘Now, never let me hear any more of such folly,’ she said, however, valiantly, upon the principle that most noise is to be got out of an empty barrel; ‘I’ll turn the key in the door, and then you’ll know nobody can get in.’

‘No, leave the key inside, and I’ll lock the door, and then, if she comes again, I’ll holloa.’

‘You’d better not,’ retorted his mother, so sharply that Dick, discomfited, wrapped the bedclothes about his head, and twisting himself up like a hedgehog, lay repeating in a sort of rhyme the description of the woman who had broken in upon his rest.

That Mrs Tippens did not sleep much during the course of the night—no, not even when her husband was snoring by her side, and the children had long sunk into slumber—will be readily imagined.

Few things had ever caused more excitement in a neighbourhood than the disappearance of Dr and Mrs Jones. Here to-day and gone to-morrow; gone, without beat of drum or sound of fife; gone without the excitement of furniture moving, or cab laden with luggage, or funeral pomp and ceremony; even a one-horse hearse, without plumes or mutes, or decorous wands, or long black cloaks, or hatbands, or mourning coaches to follow, would have been better than this silent, mysterious flitting.

If the earth had suddenly opened and swallowed up husband and wife, they could not have vanished more utterly. There was the house they had lived in, but where were they?

What secret did that one night hold which all the intelligence of the whole parish failed to elucidate? Where was he? What was more to the point, where was she? Upon this last question public opinion at length became unanimous. She was buried in the cellars. Her husband had murdered her—so it was finally decided—and after killing the ‘poor dear’ had disposed of her remains in the manner indicated. That an industrious course of digging and grubbing brought no body or bones to light proved nothing but that ‘the doctor was a deep one,’ to quote the observations of local wiseacres.

‘He used her cruel in her lifetime,’ said one.

‘Aye, that he did,’ capped another. ‘And he wouldn’t give her the chance of Christian burial. She’s lying hidden away in some dark corner; no wonder the creature can’t rest there. No; I wouldn’t sleep a night in that house, not if you counted me down a hundred pounds in golden sovereigns.’

‘Neither would I, was it ever so.’

‘For there’s not a doubt she walks.’

‘Of course she does. Didn’t my own cousin, when she was coming along the passage one summer’s night, feel like an icy wind at the nape of her neck, and as if a cold hand was laid flat on her shoulders? And she always says she knows if she had looked round she’d have seen the old woman with her grey hair—’

‘That he used to drag her about by—’

‘Streaming down her back, and her eyes, filled with hunger and ill-treatment, staring through the darkness.’

‘The house ought to be pulled to the ground—that’s what ought to be done with it—’

‘And not one stone left on another—’

‘And those cellars thoroughly examined.’

‘It’s my belief there’s some secret place in them that hasn’t been found out yet.’

‘Very likely. You know it is reported there used to be a passage big enough for a man to creep along from there to the Thames.’

‘Bless and save us—maybe he has put her in the river.’

‘No, no; though he was wicked enough for that or anything else, she’s in the house somewhere right enough, and if she could speak she would say so.’

‘I wonder where he is?’

‘Lord knows. Enjoying himself, most likely, beyond the seas.’

‘I suppose he was about the worst man you ever knew.’

‘I suppose he was about the worst man anybody ever knew.’

‘And the cleverest.’

‘Aye, he had brains to do anything, but they all turned to wickedness.’

It often happens that a man obtains a reputation for talent in his own immediate circle on very slight and insufficient grounds; but in the case of Dr Jones, popular rumour did not exaggerate the missing gentleman’s abilities.

He was very clever indeed. He was so clever he might have risen to almost any height in his profession, had he not been at once lazy and self-indulgent. His father having lived and practised before, he succeeded to a prosperous business and a wide connexion. When he first started on his own account, all the old houses in the street where he lived, and all the old houses in many other streets and squares and terraces and groves near at hand, were inhabited by well-to-do City people, by widows amply dowered, by men who had made their money in trade and were now living in affluent retirement.

It was a capital parish for a doctor to settle in; none of your new neighbourhoods, tenanted by mere birds of passage; once a medical man got a patient he had a chance of keeping him for many years. There were names on Dr Jones’ books of people and families who had been physicked by the Joneses for more than half a century. Never a man began life under more auspicious circumstances.

He had the medical ball at his feet. Old ladies adored him, because he ordered them exactly what he knew they liked in the way of eating; old gentlemen were quite sure he understood their complaints, when he declared ‘a few glasses of sound wine could hurt no one.’ He met the best physicians and surgeons in consultation and people agreed if any man could put a person on his legs again that man was Dr Jones.

But as time went on, and Dr Jones waxed more prosperous and less careful, it was found that, in spite of his many admirable virtues, he had grave faults. In no single respect did his moral character attain to that high standard which a doctor, above all other men, ought to try to reach. Things were whispered about him which mothers felt could not be spoken of before the younger members of the family; things indeed, which were, even among matrons, mentioned with chairs drawn close together, and bated breath and much uplifting of eyes and hands.

Fact is, the decency and restraint of respectable English society had become intolerable to the successful practitioner. For a long time he contented himself with sowing his bad wild oats at a distance from his dwelling—drinking, gambling, and leading the loosest of lives in the many disreputable haunts to be found on the north side of the Thames, instead of frequenting those in his own county of Surrey. But by degrees he began to fall into evil habits near home; then into the midst of that very sanctuary presided over by a maiden sister of uncertain age and rigid morality, he introduced all manner of wickedness.

The day came when Miss Jones could endure the drinking and the smoking and the card-playing and the boon-companions no longer. With a certain stately dignity she packed up her belongings and left the house where she had been born. Further, she employed a lawyer to disentangle her pecuniary affairs from those of her brother. Then all their little world knew dreadful things must be going on at Dr Jones’. His character, or rather lack of character, was discussed both by church and chapel goers. His doings added a fresh zest to parish visiting, for, of course, the poor knew even more about the doctor’s sins than their betters. His tastes led him to prefer bold, flaunting women to their more modest, if not less frail, sisters; and the brazen impudence of the ‘dreadful creatures’ he successively selected for housekeepers furnished as constant a theme for comment and gossip as the shortcomings of Dr Jones himself.

‘He wants a wife to steady him,’ said one lady, whose daughter had been marriageable for nearly a third part of the time allotted by the Psalmist to man’s sojourn on earth.

Alas! poor soul, her wishes blinded her. All the wives of all the patriarchs could not have steadied Dr Jones. He had started on a muck, and was running it blindly, like one possessed. Had he lived in the former days, one might have said that not one devil merely but a legion had taken for habitation the handsome fleshly temple of his body.

In the way of open sin, unblushing audacious wickedness, no medical man, perhaps, ever vied with Dr Jones.

His house, after his sister’s departure, became a scandal and a reproach, and yet so great was the doctor’s skill he still had patients, and good paying patients too, but they were all of his own sex; the man did not live who could have sent for him to attend wife, or sister, or mother, or daughter.

So his family practice slipped into other and cleaner hands, and another and wiser general practitioner grew rich upon Dr Jones’ leavings.

All at once society was amazed by the rumour that the doctor was going to be married to a lady possessed of great wealth; so report said, adding that ere long wonderful changes might be looked upon in the old house.

It was swept and garnished at any rate, the drawing-room smartened up, a brougham purchased, the latest and most utterly objectionable housekeeper dispatched about her business, whatever it might be, two respectable servants engaged, a man hired to look after the horse, answer the door, and prove a general credit to the street. Dr Jones himself left off smoking pipes and took to cigars instead; he eschewed the local public houses, forswore billiards, all packs of cards were cleared out of the dwelling; he washed, he shaved; he wore a coat instead of a dressing-gown, and he was to be found, by such patients as desired to see him, before twelve o’clock, till which time he had of late been in the habit of taking his rest in bed.

Things were looking up; the Mrs Jones who was to be, had, people felt, already achieved wonders; she was a credit to her sex; ladies admitted they could not possibly ever have the husband again as a medical man, but they might once more receive him as an acquaintance. Prodigals are always interesting, perhaps because no one ever really believes they will reform, and Dr Jones was a specially delightful prodigal—so clever, so handsome, so reckless, so wicked, so extravagant.

He had studied at one time at a German University, and it had somehow been ascertained that no wilder spirit ever troubled the peace of the quaint old town that lay under the shadow of the frowning castle.

His world which, a short time previously, failed to find words strong enough to express its reprobation of his conduct, now began to make excuses for him. Perhaps his faults had been exaggerated, possibly there was only a modicum of truth in the reports which had been spread abroad concerning his doings: clever men always make enemies, the tattle of the lower orders could not be exactly depended upon; and in fine, to put the matter in a nutshell, it was at length unanimously decided to call on Mrs Jones when she returned from the honeymoon.

There was something after these visits for gossips to talk about! What countrywoman could she be?—where had he met her?—what was she?—who was she?—what had she been?

Years seemed to stretch between her and the doctor—on the wrong side, of course.

She was little, she was old, she was plain, she was ignorant, and she was most furiously jealous. She could not endure her husband to look at or speak to any other woman. Even the elderly unmarried daughter of her mother, who was a widow, who would have liked Seraphina to undertake the doctor’s case, even this innocent ewe lamb seemed unbearable to the bride.

No use now to think of pleasant little parties to which Mrs Jones and her reformed husband might be bidden. No card-tables, no carpet-dances, no snug dinners, no safe and harmless social intercourse, which it had been hoped might prove to the repentant doctor as refreshing and non-intoxicating as a course of milk, lemonade, and cocoa to the once infuriated drunkard.

On the whole, perhaps, the matrons, in their hearts, thought Mrs Jones’ virtues worse than her husband’s vices; tacitly it was agreed not to force acquaintanceship on her. Possibly she had her own set of friends, and it was felt it would be most undesirable to introduce foreigners of no respectable colour into the bosom of British families who had made their money in the City, as everybody knew; and who piqued themselves upon the strictness of their morals, the length of their purses, and the strength of their prejudices.

One gentleman, whose own face was as rosy as a peony, declared, with a mild asseveration, ‘Jones has married a blackamoor’; but Mrs Jones was not black, only exceedingly brown, so brown that if she darkened much more, as time went on, she bade fair eventually to outvie the rich splendour of the old Spanish mahogany chairs, which had been recovered and repolished to do her honour.

At the end of little more than three years from the date of his marriage, it might have been truly said of Dr Jones that his last state was worse than his first. How many demons eventually took up their habitation within him it would be impossible to say; but the doings of the Joneses’ household, more particularly the doings of its master, became a terror and reproach to the neighbourhood.

How the case really stood no one ever exactly knew; all sorts of rumours and stories passed from mouth to mouth. She would not give him a shilling of her money, so gossip averred. He had stood over her with a cutting whip to compel her to sign papers, and then she would not; a mode of proceeding on the part of Dr Jones to practise before witnesses, which was, to say the least of the matter, unlikely. Popular report asserted he starved her; but as she generally answered the street-door herself, was free to walk in and out if she pleased, and could have told any tradesmen to bring her anything she fancied, this was evidently a libel. At one time an idea got abroad that the whole tale of her fortune had been a myth; that the doctor had been taken in, and that there were dreadful quarrels between them in consequence; but the boastings of various servants who declared they had seen her with ‘rolls on rolls’ of banknotes and with such diamonds and rubies as the ‘Queen of Sheba or Solomon himself could have had nothing more splendid,’ negatived the truth of this statement.

Money or no money, however, the Joneses were a miserable couple. Mrs Jones could not and would not endure a female servant about the house; as fast as they were engaged they went: a fortnight was a long time for any woman, young or old, to stop in the situation, and so ere long the house acquired that look of dirt and neglect some houses seem especially able to assume at the shortest notice. Little more than three years married and already the grass growing between the stones in the stableyard was nearly a foot high. The high-stepping horse had long been sold, and the brougham also; the new piano, never opened, followed suit; and about the same time Dr Jones, giving up all idea of reformation and practice, and abandoning the role of a repentant prodigal, returned to his swine and his husks on the Middlesex side of the river; for he could not enjoy even such companionship and diet on his own side of the water, for fear Mrs Jones might take it in her head to mar with her presence the delights of an evening in some low public house or lower music hall, or lower depth still; for, if all stories were to be believed, the doctor went down very low indeed. Accordingly, when Christmas, for the fourth time after that inauspicious and, as some people went so far as to say, unchristian marriage, was approaching, people felt Dr Jones had run about the length of his tether.

A change of some sort seemed imminent. He was in debt in the neighbourhood, a thing he had never been known to be in before. Even the few things sent into that evil house were not paid for, and hitherto the doctor’s credit had been so good that he owed in the neighbourhood more than might otherwise have been the case.

Mrs Jones said she would not pay, and the doctor said he could not. Nevertheless, after some parley, he promised to do what he could after Christmas—this was remembered afterwards—and the British tradesman, easily irritated, easily appeased, departed.

No joint, no turkey, no anything was ordered in for the 25th of that December. ‘Let him get his Christmas dinner where he gets his other dinners,’ said Mrs Jones, in answer to a feeble remonstrance from the crone who came in daily to ‘put the place a bit to rights,’ a woman so old, so wrinkled, so ugly, so dirty, and so shabby that even Dr Jones, his wife felt, was unlikely to chuck her under the chin, or exchange with her repartees more remarkable for wit than refinement. Apprised in due time of the fare he might expect at home, the once again unreformed prodigal announced his intention of accepting an invitation he said he had received to dine at a friend’s house on Christmas Day.

Mrs Jones tried hard to ascertain where this friend lived, but in vain, and still firm to her intention of providing no feast, even for herself, she told Mrs Jubb, the charwoman, to bring in the tea tray and the kettle, and then to go.

About the events of that day and evening and the following morning Mrs Jubb had afterwards much to tell, and she told it.

‘As I come up from the kitchen,’ she was wont to observe, ‘and an awful kitchen that was too, full of black-beetles and slugs—just as I got on the top of the stairs, I saw the master, with his thick coat on, brushing his hat. He put it on and took his umbrella, and he opened the door and slammed it after him, and that was the last I ever see of Dr Jones. I took the tea-things into the drawing-room, and set the kettle on the hob, and I asked Mrs Jones if she was sure I could not do anything else before I went.

‘She said, “Quite sure, Mrs Jubb; good evening.”

‘I had a sort of feeling on me, I did not like to leave her, though I knew John’s children would be crying for me at home; and so I made believe to be putting the cup and saucer and plate nearer to her hand, and she looked round in her quick way, and asked sharp, as if I had angered her:

‘ “Didn’t you hear me say ‘good evening,’ Mrs Jubb? You can go.”

‘So I went, and that was the last I ever saw of her. Goodness only knows where they both went to. It was not the next day, but the next day but one, the police got into the house through a window at the back that was left half an inch open (for I went down to the station, and told the inspector I was sure as sure murder had been done, for I could not make anybody hear, and the gas was burning, and the cat, poor thing, mewing in the area, and not another sign of life about the place); and there they found the tray just as I’d left it, and the fire out and the kettle on the hob, and high or low, in garret or cellar, not a trace of Dr or Mrs Jones.’

There was nothing which gratified Mrs Jubb’s numerous friends and acquaintances more than to get her started on this theme.

The story was one which, properly managed, lasted for hours. Mrs Jubb’s feelings, Mrs Jubb’s doings, Mrs Jubb’s sayings, the remarks of the police, the fury and dismay of the tradespeople, and the many observations of the sprightly youth and beauty and strength of the neighbourhood, enabled the narrative to be spun out almost to the length of a three-volume novel.

‘And after all, where did Dr and Mrs Jones go?’ once asked an impatient and inquisitive auditor, who chanced to be listening for the first time to the oft-told tale.

‘That’ll never be known on this earth,’ answered Mrs Jubb; ‘my own notion is, she started to follow him—’

‘Then she can’t be buried in the cellars,’ interposed another.

‘You don’t know what a man like that could do,’ said Mrs Jubb; ‘why, even now, poor as I am, I wouldn’t live in the house as them Tippenses are doing, no, not if you paved the hall with golden guineas.’

‘There’s nobody going to tempt you, mother,’ remarked an incredulous youth; ‘I’d chance meeting all the ghosts out of the churchyard, let alone old Mrs Jones, for a ten-pound note.’

‘You don’t know what you are talking about, Jim,’ retorted Mrs Jubb.

‘Well, it was a queer start anyway,’ returned the undaunted Jim; ‘the Kilkenny cats left their tails behind them, but the doctor and his wife took away every bit of their bodies—’

‘And left clothes, and furniture, and bedding, and china, and plate, and linen, and all, just as if they had walked out of the house to spend a day at a friend’s.’

Which statement was, indeed, literally true; when the police entered the house they found no corpse, no confusion, no symptom of murder or premeditated departure. Nothing seemed to have been removed except the master and mistress, who had not taken with them even the typical ‘comb and toothbrush.’

They were gone. Dr Jones’ creditors drew their own conclusions; the wealthy and respectable inhabitants did not know what to believe or think; the police felt disposed to consider the whole affair a make-up between the doctor and his wife; the general public, as usual, were not to be convinced by argument, or confounded by facts, they preferred to believe old Mrs Jones had been murdered and her body what they called ‘put away’ somewhere about the premises. Shortly after there followed a rumour of hidden treasure, then it was known for certain that the house was haunted, and, further, that no one who tried to live in it but was visited by some misfortune.

When the wind howled outside her dwelling, and shook the casements, and whistled through the keyholes, and the rain beat against the windows with a noise like slapping with an open hand, it was a dear delight to gossips to gather round Mrs Jubb’s fire, to which most who came contributed a billet, and hear the whole story again, with additions of what had happened to those venturesome enough to try conclusions with old Mrs Jones, out of the flesh.

‘She was an awful woman to have much to say to when living,’ said Mrs Jubb; ‘dead, she’ll be a thousand times worse.’

‘I wonder what she wants wandering about the old house,’ said the irrepressible Jim; ‘if all accounts are true, she was none so happy in it.’

‘Ah, she knows that best herself, and she’s not going to tell,’ returned Mrs Jubb. ‘I wouldn’t like to see her, that’s all.’

To say that Mrs Tippens wished to leave the house when her lodgers and children began to see visions is but to say she was a woman. She told her husband she ‘didn’t know how she felt,’ which meant, as he was too well aware, that she desired to move. She likewise casually mentioned that ‘she seemed all nerves,’ and that ‘she was getting afraid of her own shadow.’

To this Mr Tippens replied he was very sorry, but he hoped she would try and pull herself together a bit, and not be frightened by a lot of lying stories. If they only held their tongues and stayed in the house for a while, people would soon quit talking about old Mrs Jones, and then their lodgers would remain and not give notice because a door creaked.

He reminded her how he was answerable for the rent for three years, that he was not likely ever to get such cheap and convenient premises again, and he implored her, like a good girl, not to be foolish and believe the house was haunted just because a parcel of old women, with Mrs Jubb at their head, chose to give it a bad name.

‘But, Dick,’ remonstrated Mrs Tippens, ‘you know it is said that nobody thrives who stops here. There was old Mrs Smith broke her leg in two places, and Mrs Curtiss’s child was run over in the street; and Mr Perks, that was so respected, fell to robbing his employer, and is in jail now for taking more than a hundred pounds. And John Coombe turned teetotaller, and took to beating his wife—and—’

Mr Tippens laughed outright. ‘Make your mind easy, Luce,’ he said; ‘I’m not likely either to turn teetotaller or take to beating you, lass; and as for the children, if you don’t like them sleeping out of your sight, bring them in here till you get some of those notions blown off your mind; and when the days draw out a little, you and they shall have a week at the seaside, and you’ll get so strong and well you’ll laugh at ghosts, and make quite a joke of old Mrs Jones.’

Poor Mrs Tippens! She only wished her lodgers could see the joke as well, for they were always going; except one old lady on the top floor who was blind and slightly deaf, not a soul stopped any time with her.

‘I don’t know how it is,’ she said to them, ‘for I have never seen anything in the house myself.’ Whereupon she was told ‘she was fortunate,’ or reminded ‘there were none so blind as those that would not see,’ or assured ‘her turn was certain to come,’ or advised, ‘clear out of the house before harm befell her and hers,’ ‘for it is just a-tempting of Providence to stop in it,’ said one person.

‘Upon the other hand,’ as Mr Tippens, determined to look on the bright side of things, remarked, ‘if lodgers were always going they were always coming; and you get such long prices for the rooms, Lucy, they can afford to stay empty part of a week now and then; and see how well the children are, having the yard to play in, which gives them plenty of air and keeps them out of the streets; and you are stronger and better yourself, and would be hearty if you would only stir about a bit more and not sit so constant at your needle.’ Further, business with Mr Tippens was so good he had been forced to buy another horse, for which he paid seven pounds. ‘That very same horse,’ he often afterwards stated, ‘no more nor a month later I sold, as true as I am standing here, for twenty guineas. A fare took a fancy to him and bid me the money, and you may be sure I didn’t say “no.” ’

It was, perhaps, on the strength of this transaction Mrs Tippens and family travelled to Southend for the week previously mentioned to eat shrimps and repair dilapidations, returning to Dr Jones’s former residence, as Mr Tippens declared, ‘in the best of health and spirits.’

It was not long, however, after their return before Mrs Tippens again began to feel her nerves troubling her. She did not say anything to her husband about the matter, but she mentioned to a few friends she had a ‘sort of weight on her,’ as if there was ‘something wrong, she did not know what,’ and ‘a fluttering round her heart,’ and ‘a weakness in her limbs,’ and ‘a creeping sensation at the back of her neck, when she came along the passage, as though, on the warmest day, a chill, clammy hand was laid there,’ after which lucid description of symptoms the whole question of old Mrs Jones was again thoroughly gone into; the statements of all the lodgers repeated in extenso, and the gossip current in the neighbourhood retailed for the twentieth time.

Small marvel that, after these conversations, almost exhaustive as they were of the Jones topic, Mrs Tippens, returning to her house, felt a ‘waft of raw air’ meet her the moment she opened the street door, and something ‘brush along the hall after her,’ as she passed into the sitting-room. She was braver than most women, and would, had she seen anything tangible, have tried to solve the enigma. But this pursuit by a shadow, this terror of the unseen, the feeling that there was a presence in the room with her which eluded her sight, began to prey on both her mind and body. She longed to cry out, ‘Take me away from this evil house or I shall die’; but when Dick entered, his honest face radiant with smiles, his tongue ready to tell of the gentlemen who had hired him to drive them to Chiswick, and given him about four times his proper fare, and some presents in his hands for ‘Luce, old girl,’ the words died away on her lips, and she could only thank Dick for thinking so constantly about her, and hang round his neck with a fervour Mr Tippens was not accustomed to from a somewhat undemonstrative wife.

‘Who do you think I have had a letter from?’ he asked one morning in the early summer, as he came in to breakfast, after a stroll down the street in search of a dried haddock or something savoury for Luce, who ‘seemed a bit peaked and off her feed’—Luce cannot speak of those days, and of her husband’s constant thought for her, now without tears—‘why, from my cousin, Anne Jane; I met the postman—and Luce, I couldn’t get anything worm buying for you, only a nasty kipper, but I thought kippers were better than nothing, as you’re tired of rashers; well, as I was saying, I met the postman, and he gave me a letter from Anne Jane. Her mistress and the whole family are going abroad, but they are keeping on Anne Jane, you see, though she doesn’t go with them. While they are away she has a fancy for a change. She’s tired of the sea and Brighton, and thinks she’d like to spend her holiday in London, so she writes to ask if we can take her in; she wants to pay for her board and lodging, but, of course, that’s all nonsense; I shouldn’t let my uncle’s daughter pay a halfpenny for bread as long as I had a penny roll; what do you say, Luce? Shall I tell her to come; she’s a good girl, as you know, and a quiet, and she’d be company for you while I am away. What d’ye say, girl?’

‘I’d be only too glad for her to come, Dick; but where is she to sleep; we could only give her the room at the end of the passage, and—’

‘If that’s all, make your mind quite easy; she doesn’t come of a family which trouble themselves about what you can’t lay hold of. Then you’re agreeable to have her, my girl; if you’re not, just say the word—’

‘I can’t tell you how pleased I should be to have her, only—’

‘I’ll make that all right, old woman,’ and accordingly that very same day Dick went out and bought three sheets of notepaper for a penny, and three evnelopes for the same price; and in the silent seclusion of the stable, while the horsekeeper was away for his dinner, indited an epistle to his cousin, in which he assured her of a warm welcome, of his determination not to take a farthing of her hard-earned wages, and of Lucy’s delight at the prospect of showing her the London sights.

All in good time Miss Anne Jane Tippens arrived at the house tenanted by her cousins from London Bridge Station in a four-wheeler, on the top of which appeared a trunk, encased in a neat holland cover, bound with red, the handiwork of Anne Jane, who paid the cabman his exact fare duly ascertained beforehand, and walked in the hall old Mrs Jones was supposed to haunt, laden with all the impedimenta perishable creatures of the frailer sex are so fond of carrying whithersoever they go—a withered nosegay, a basket filled with seaweed and shells, a bandbox, another paper-box, oblong, and a few paper parcels were amongst the baggage; but at length everything was stowed away in the room Dr Jones had used as a surgery, and Mrs Tippens stood surveying the ‘very genteel figure’ of her husband’s cousin, as that young person, after refreshing laving of her dusty face, stood before the glass, ‘doing up’ her hair.

Miss Tippens was the incarnation of the ideal sewing-maid in a good family.

Tall, but not too tall; thin, but not too thin; with pallid face, brown eyes, thick hair brushed back, and tightly plaited till it looked of no account, not pretty or ugly, quiet of movement, soft of voice; a good girl who—at last her toilet finished—turned to Mrs Tippens and said:

‘Now, dear, you’ll let me help you all I can while I stay here.’

‘I never told her one single word about old Mrs Jones; there seemed a spell on me,’ said Mrs Tippens, using the approved formula of her class, when speaking, subsequently, concerning the events which rendered Miss Tippens’ visit memorable. ‘That very first day as ever was she said, with that still sort of laugh of hers, Dick had wanted her not to come if she felt anyways shy of ghosts. “I have always had rather a wish to see a ghost,” she went on, making my very blood run cold with the light way she talked, and maybe old Mrs Jones listening to her for aught I could tell. “What sort of a ghost is it you keep here, Lucy?”

‘ “There has been a lot of chatter about the house,” I made answer, “but I don’t say anything on the subject indoors for fear of the children being frightened. People pretend there is something not right in the place, but nothing has come Dick’s way or mine either”; and then I began talking of something else and Anne took the hint; she was a wonderfully wise, prudent sort of girl, as girls have to be who get into high families and want to keep their situations.’

The day following Miss Tippens’ arrival was devoted to showing her some of the London sights. She had been in London before, but only for a short time when ‘the family’ came up to town, and she being kept hard at work under the eye of an exceedingly strict housekeeper was unable to see any of the wonders of the metropolis, except Kensal Green Cemetery, concerning which cheerful place she spoke with a good deal of enthusiasm. As a foretaste of the delights to come, Mrs Tippens took her to the Abbey, showed her the exterior of the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, Northumberland House, the fountains in Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Somerset House, Temple Bar, St Paul’s, and the Monument. By the time they had arrived at Fish Street Hill, Anne Jane was tired out, and declining to climb Pope’s ‘tall bully,’ asked Mrs Tippens if they were very far from home, ‘because,’ she added, ‘I don’t think I can walk much more.’

‘Dear me!’ cried Mrs Tippens, ‘I ought to have remembered you were not over strong; why, you look fit to drop. We’ll go down to the pier and take the boat straight back, and you can rest all day to-morrow, for I shan’t be able to stir out, as our first-floors are leaving, and I must see about getting the rooms fit for anyone to see.’

‘You’ll sleep without rocking to-night, young woman,’ observed Mr Tippens, as they all sat together over an early supper.

‘I always sleep wonderfully sound,’ replied Miss Tippens, stating the fact as if some peculiar merit attached to it.

‘And you’d better lie in in the morning, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea,’ said Mrs Tippens, kindly hospitable.

‘Ay, make her stop a-bed,’ exclaimed Mr Tippens. ‘I’ll be bound she gets none too much sleep in service. I’d like well to see a bit of colour in your cheeks before you leave us.’

Next morning Mrs Tippens took a tray, on which was set out a nice little breakfast, into her visitor’s bedchamber. Anne Jane did not look much better for her night’s rest and morning sleep.

‘I woke at five,’ she said, ‘and then went off again, and never roused till you came in, and yet I feel as tired as possible. I am not much accustomed to walking, and we did walk a long way yesterday.’

‘Yes, we went too far,’ agreed Mrs Tippens, and then she sat down beside her guest’s pillow, and tucked the sheet under the tray to keep it steady, and hoped she would relish her breakfast, which, Anne declared, ‘she was sure to do, if only because they were so kind to her.’

‘We would like to be kind to you,’ said Mrs Tippens; adding, so that no more might be said on the subject, ‘and you slept well?’

‘Yes; but isn’t it funny, all the earlier part of the night I was dreaming about a woman being murdered. It was talking about old times, and wandering about those ancient places and tombs and monuments, I suppose, made me think of such things. I was quite glad to see the sun shining in at the window when I woke, for oh, the dream did appear just like reality!’ And the dreamer paused to drink a little tea, and take a bit of bread and butter, and munch a few leaves of watercress, and taste the delicate slices of ham Dick himself had cut, what he called ‘Vauxhall fashion,’ to tempt his cousin’s poor appetite, while Mrs Tippens sat silent, afraid, she could not tell why, of what might be coming.

‘Dreams are strange things,’ proceeded Miss Tippens, after the fashion of a person originating an entirely novel idea, ‘and mine was a strange dream.’

‘Your tea will be stone cold, dear,’ interposed Mrs Tippens. It was but deferring the evil hour, she felt, yet every moment of delay seemed a moment gained.

‘I don’t like it very warm,’ answered the other, ‘and I want to tell you my dream. I thought I was in a room I had never seen before, with three windows to the street, and one long, narrow window that looked out I didn’t know on what. The room was wainscoted about two yards from the floor, well furnished with chairs and tables; I could feel a thick carpet under my feet, and see a glass over the chimney-piece, in which a woman was looking at herself. Oh! Luce, she was the strangest woman I ever beheld, so little, she was forced to stand on a footstool to see herself in the glass; she had a brown face and grey hair, and her dress was unfastened, and a necklace, that sparkled and glittered, clasped her neck, and she pinned a brooch, that shone like fire, in the front of her under bodice; and on a little table beside her lay an open jewel case, in which there were precious stones gleaming like green and yellow stars.’

‘Do eat your breakfast, Anne, and never mind the dream; you can tell it to me afterwards.’

‘There isn’t much more to tell,’ answered Anne. ‘All at once she saw in the glass the door open, and a man come in. With a stifled scream she jumped down from the stool, seized the case, and tried to close her dress up round her throat, and hide the necklace; but he was too quick for her. He said something, I could not hear what; and then, as she cowered down, he caught her and wrenched the case out of her hand, and made a snatch at the necklace just as she flew upon him, with all her fingers bent and uttering the most terrible cries that ever came out of a woman’s lips—I think I hear them now; then, in a minute she fell back, and I could see she was only kept from dropping on the floor by the tight grip he had on the necklace. I seemed to know she was being choked, and I tried to call out, but I could not utter a sound. I strove to rush at the man, but my feet felt rooted where I stood; then there came a great darkness like the darkness of a winter’s night.’

‘Let me get you another cup of tea, dear,’ said Mrs Tippens, in a voice which shook a little in spite of all her efforts to steady it; ‘you’ve let this stand so long it is not fit to drink.’

‘It is just as I like my tea, thank you,’ answered Miss Tippens, cheerfully, as she devoted herself to the good things provided. ‘What do you think of my dream?’

‘That I shouldn’t have liked to dream it,’ replied Mrs Tippens. ‘Do let me pour you out some more tea, and then I must run away, for the first-floor lodgers will be wanting me.’ Which was a feint on the part of Mrs Tippens, who felt she could not bear to hear anything more at the moment about the little woman with the brown face and the grey hair, whose portrait she recognised too surely as that of old Mrs Jones.

‘Though why she can’t let us, who never did her any harm, alone, I can’t imagine,’ considered Mrs Tippens. ‘This is a dreadful house—true enough, there has been murder done in it, and the blood is crying aloud for vengeance. I wonder where that wicked wretch put her. Oh! Mrs Jones, if you’d only tell us where your poor bones are mouldering, I am sure Dick would have them decently buried, let the cost be what it might.’

The first-floor lodgers were gone, and the rooms scrubbed out before Anne Jane, having dressed and settled up her own bedchamber, made her appearance in her cousin’s parlour; but when she suggested that they might go upstairs and have a look at the apartments just vacated, Mrs Tippens made the excuse that they were not exactly in order.

‘The charwoman is up there still,’ she exclaimed; ‘she’s making half-a-day.’

‘What a wonderfully nice house for Dick to have got,’ continued Miss Tippens.

‘Yes,’ answered Dick’s wife faintly. There was nothing to be objected to in the size of the house, if only Mrs Jones could have been kept out of it!

‘If you don’t mind my leaving you, Anne, for half an hour, I think I’ll just run out and get a few things we want,’ she said. ‘Supposing anyone should come after the first floor, Mrs Burdock can show it.’ Which would have been all very well, had not Mrs Burdock, ten minutes after Mrs Tippens’ departure, put her head into the parlour to say that she should like to go home to see to her children’s dinners, and, if it made no difference, she would come back in the afternoon and wipe over the windows and blacklead the grates. ‘The rooms are quite clean and sweet,’ she added, ‘if anybody by chance do come to look at them.’

The children were out in the yard playing, the meat was cooking beautifully in the oven, the fruit pudding was boiling gently on the trivet, the potatoes were in the saucepan, ready to be put on the fire at a certain time which Mrs Tippens had indicated; the street was simmering in the noon-tide heat of a summer’s day, and Anne Jane, making a frock for the baby asleep in its cradle, was thinking Lucy’s lines had fallen into very pleasant places, when there came at the front door a knock, which she instinctively understood meant lodgers.

They were two young gentlemen, attracted by the neat appearance of the house, by the snowy curtains in Mrs Tippens’ room, the bird-cage hanging in the window, the flowers in bloom, ranged in pots on the sill.

‘Could we see the rooms you have to let?’ asked the elder, who acted as spokesman.

‘Certainly, sir; will you be pleased to walk in?’ answered Anne Jane in her best manner; and motioning to the strangers to precede her, she followed them up to the first floor, where she flung wide the door of the principal apartment.

‘By Jove!’ exclaimed both men, almost simultaneously, ‘who’d have thought there was such a jolly room in this old house?’ and they walked over to one of the windows and looked out into the street, and then turned towards the fireplace, and then—

‘Hello! What’s the matter?’ cried the first speaker, hurrying towards the door, against the lintel of which Mr Tippens’ cousin was leaning, looking more like a corpse than a living woman. ‘Here, hand over that chair, Hal, I believe she is going to faint.’

‘No,’ she gasped; ‘no—no—I shall be better—directly.’

At that moment Mrs Tippens, who had heard from a neighbour some gentlemen were gone to look at her rooms, put her key in the lock and came hurrying upstairs. The first glance told her what had happened.

‘My cousin is not very strong, sir,’ she said, in a voice she tried to keep steady, though she was trembling in every limb. ‘I’ll just take her into the parlour, and be with you in a moment, if you please.’

‘Let me help you,’ entreated the younger man. ‘Take my arm, do.—Is she subject to attacks of this sort?’ he went on, speaking in a lower tone.

‘Not that I know of,’ was the reply. ‘Perhaps, sir,’ suggested Mrs Tippens, ‘you would not mind looking over the rooms by yourselves. There is no one in but the children; I scarcely like leaving my cousin alone.’

‘Is there anything you want—anything I can run out and get for you?’ asked the young fellow pleasantly. ‘Do you think that a little brandy—’

‘I have some in the house, thank you, sir,’ answered Mrs Tippens; and so at last she got rid of him, and stood looking at Anne Jane, who, leaning back in Mr Tippens’ own particular armchair, looked up at her and murmured, ‘The room.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘It was the room of my dream.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘Did he kill her there?’

‘Who’s to tell? Nobody knows whether she is alive or dead, for that matter.’

‘No, sir, I won’t deceive you. If you are wanting rooms, as you say, for a permanency, and think of buying good furniture that would get knocked about and ruined in moving, and settling down comfortably in the next lodgings you take, you had better not come here.’

‘Why, are you going to leave the house?’

‘My husband is answerable for the rent for nearly two years longer,’ replied Mrs Tippens evasively. ‘No, sir, it is not that; I wish it was.’

‘Have you any infectious illness in the place?’

‘I’d rather have smallpox,’ broke out Mrs Tippens, who felt she could endure her trouble no longer in silence. ‘We might get rid of that, but we can’t get rid of old Mrs Jones.’

‘Who is she—a lodger?’

‘Worse than the worst of lodgers, sir; a lodger can do no more than owe rent, or at the most take things that don’t belong to him; but Mrs Jones pays no rent, and wants to live in every room in the house, and as fast as new lodgers come and we think we are going to be a bit comfortable at last, drives them to give notice. Fever and ague would be small evils in comparison to old Mrs Jones, and why she torments us so I can’t imagine, we never did the woman any injury; and as for her money I am sure if it was lying in bags of gold and silver at my feet I wouldn’t touch a coin of it.’

The two men stared at each other in amazement, then the elder said solemnly:

‘In Heaven’s name, who is Mrs Jones?’

‘She was the wife of a Dr Jones, sir. He once rented this house. He and she disappeared the same night, and have never been heard of since.’

‘But I thought you said she lived here?’

‘No, sir; I don’t know where she lives, if she is living at all; but this is the way of it: one set of lodgers after another say they are very sorry but they can’t stop on account of old Mrs Jones. They either meet her on the stairs, or she takes a chair at the table when they are having their dinner, or she goes into their bedroom with a light in her hand, and then my cousin must get dreaming about her and, as you saw, was taken bad the moment she crossed the threshold of this room. I am sure, sir, I never did believe in ghosts and suchlike before we came here, but I can’t disbelieve now, after what I’ve heard; and so I tell you not to take the apartments or to go to any expense buying furniture, for you wouldn’t stop—I know you wouldn’t—a fortnight is the longest anybody ever stays now.’

‘That settles the matter, we’ll come, and we’ll stay longer. For my own part I have always rather wanted to see a ghost and—’

‘Oh, don’t talk that way, please, sir.’

‘Well, at any rate, we’ll pay you for the rooms for a month certain, and if you can do our cooking and make us a little comfortable, we won’t quarrel about terms.’

‘But I don’t think you exactly understand, sir.’

‘Yes I do, and I trust we shall know more about old Mrs Jones than we do now before we are much older.’

‘I hope you won’t buy good furniture, sir, till you have been here a few days; I can spare enough just to make the place tidy for you to come into.’ And so it was settled; the young man, after saying they would like to take possession the same evening, put a month’s rent and money to provide grocery and so forth into Mrs Tippens’ reluctant hand, and departed.

‘Let what will happen, they can’t say I did not warn them,’ thought Mrs Tippens, as she hurried off to see whether Anne Jane had been able to attend to the potatoes or if they were boiled to pulp.

Meantime the friends, walking along the street together, remarked, ‘What a strange-looking girl that young woman who so nearly fainted.’

‘Yes, cataleptic I shouldn’t wonder; did you notice what a far-away, unseeing sort of expression there was in her eyes?’

‘I did; and what a thick white complexion, if I may use the term.’

‘That is a queer notion about old Mrs Jones; we must get Mrs Tippens up to make tea for us some night and hear all the rights of the story.’

‘And I’ll take the liberty of putting fresh locks on the doors.’

‘You think it is somebody playing tricks, then?’

‘Of course; what else can it be? You don’t believe in disembodied spirits taking up their abode in brick and mortar houses, I suppose?

It was a strange thing, as Mrs Tippens often subsequently remarked, that from the time the new lodgers, who were medical students, took possession of the first floor, people seemed able to stay in the other parts of the house. Where old Mrs Jones had gone, and what old Mrs Jones was doing, could only, Mrs Tippens felt, be matter for conjecture; one comfort, she ceased to roam about the rooms and wander up and down the staircase; there were even times when Mrs Tippens, passing through the hall, forgot to remember that sudden waft of cold air and the chilly hand laid on the back of her neck; she still—force of habit, perhaps—instinctively refrained from looking round, lest she should encounter the streaming grey hair and dark face and fierce black eyes of old Mrs Jones; but at the end of a fortnight she began to feel, as she expressed the matter, ‘quite comfortable and easy in her mind.’

She had said something of this sort one evening to her cousin, and was waiting vainly for a reply, when Miss Tippens, without the slightest apparent reason, burst into a despairing fit of tears.

‘What, crying? For the Lord’s sake, girl, tell me what you are crying for,’ exclaimed Mrs Tippens. ‘Do, Anne, dear, if you are in any trouble, only trust it to me, and I’ll help you all I can, and so will Dick. Who has vexed you?’

‘It’s—old—Mrs—Jones,’ sobbed Anne Jane. ‘I have tried hard for your sake, but I can’t bear her any longer; I must go away—I must—I shall be a raving maniac if I stop in this house much longer. Why has she fastened on me?’ asked Miss Tippens, looking at her relation with streaming eyes. ‘Oh, Lucy, why has she left everyone else in the house to give me no peace of my life—I can’t sleep for dreaming of her—she is at my bedside every night wanting me to do something for her, or go to some place with her; and then the whole day long I keep trying to remember what she said and what she wanted, and I can’t; no, Lucy, for no advantage to you, or any other human being, can I face the horror of her any longer.’

At Anne Jane’s first words Mrs Tippens’ work dropped from her hands on to the floor, and during the delivery of this address she remained gazing at the speaker with a sort of fascinated terror; then she cried out:

‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! and just when I thought we were all settling down so comfortably; what an awful old woman! But do you ever see her, Anne, except when you are asleep?’

‘No, but I feel her round and about me. There’s a chilliness blows on my neck, and a coldness creeps down my spine, and I seem always to know that there’s somebody beside or behind me; it’s dreadful—if it was to go on, I’d rather be dead and out of my misery at once.’

‘Suppose I made you up a bed somewhere else,’ suggested Mrs Tippens.

‘What would be the good? She’s in every room in the house; she’s up and down the stairs, and on the roof, and along the parapet, and—’

‘Don’t talk about her any more, you’ll frighten me,’ exclaimed Mrs Tippens.

‘And haven’t I been frightened? How would you like to lie in the dark and know a woman—’

‘Mrs Tippens,’ called a voice, which made both women jump.

‘Lor!’ exclaimed Mrs Tippens, recovering herself, ‘you needn’t be frightened, Anne, it’s only Mr Maldon—(yes, sir, I’m coming)—I remember he left word with little Lucy he wanted to see me before he went out this morning, and what with one thing and another I quite forgot it.’ Having tendered which explanation, Mrs Tippens hurried to the first floor, leaving Anne Jane sitting with her hands tightly folded and her great eyes fixed on vacancy, or—old Mrs Jones.

‘Close the door, if you please, Mrs Tippens,’ said Mr Maldon, the elder of her two new lodgers, as, after her apologies for her forgetfulness, the nominal mistress of Dr Jones’ former residence stood waiting to hear what was wanted. ‘For some days past I have wished to speak to you alone. I only think it right to say—’

‘Oh, sir, don’t, for mercy’s sake, say you’ve seen old Mrs Jones too.’

There was such an agony of entreaty in Mrs Tippens’ voice, the young man, who did not believe in ghosts, and had expressed a wish to see one, might well have been excused smiling, but he did not smile, he only answered:

‘No, but I have seen something else.’

‘What, sir?’

‘Your cousin wandering about the house in her sleep.’

‘In her sleep! When, Mr Maldon?’

‘Well, to go no further back, last night. I followed her up to the top of the house, and she was actually going out on the roof, when I gently took her by the arm and walked her down to her own room again. I am afraid she may do herself a mischief. I was careful not to wake her, but if she should be frightened, and wake suddenly, no one can tell what accident might happen. From the first I thought there was something strange in her appearance, but I should not have imagined she was a sleepwalker.’

‘And what should you advise me to do, sir?’ asked Mrs Tippens earnestly, for this seemed to her a dreadful tiling. For a respectable young woman—and she believed and felt certain Anne Jane to be as respectable a young woman as ever lived, a wise, prudent, sensible, virtuous girl—to go wandering in the middle of the night about a house in which there were lodgers, and be handed down the stairs and back to her own room by any man, young or old, was a matter which appeared in Mrs Tippens’ eyes so preposterous, so dreadful, she could scarcely realise it; she had not courage to inquire the fashion of the costume in which Anne Jane started to make her uncomfortable pilgrimage.

‘I should advise you to take your cousin to some good medical man,’ said Mr Maldon, answering her spoken question. ‘There is no doubt she is from some cause thoroughly out of health, but meanwhile I should not say anything to her about this walking in her sleep; only you would do well to take the precaution of locking her door outside at night.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t do that,’ answered Mrs Tippens. ‘If she were my worst enemy, instead of my husband’s first cousin, I couldn’t lock her up in a room alone with old Mrs Jones.’

‘Oh—old Mrs Jones!’ exclaimed Mr Maldon.

‘Begging your pardon, sir, I don’t think you would be right to say that about the worst of sinners, let alone a poor, ill-used lady that, if all accounts be true, led a most miserable life in this very house.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well,’ interrupted Mr Maldon, ‘but don’t you see, my good soul, this tendency of your cousin’s explains the whole mystery; gets rid, in fact, of Mrs Jones altogether.’

‘In what way?’ asked Mrs Tippens.

‘Why, only in one way, of course. Your lodgers had heard the story and thought your cousin walking in her sleep must be old Mrs Jones.’

‘Yes, sir, but my cousin never entered these doors till two days before yourself, and for nine months previous to that my lodgers were fainting and flitting on account of the woman who came into their room and met them on the stairs.’

‘Is that so?’ said Mr Maldon, in the tone of a man who feels his theory has no more substantial foundation than an air castle.

‘Yes, sir, it is quite true,’ answered Mrs Tippens, a little triumphantly—since no one likes to be dispossessed of a point. ‘Anne Jane came up from Brighton the day but one before you took these lodgings. All the same, sir, I don’t mind telling you that she can’t get rest neither night nor day, because of old Mrs Jones.’

‘Dreams about her, eh?’ suggested the medical student with alacriy.t

‘She has been crying her eyes out just now because she declares the old lady won’t let her be. Stands at her bedside every night regular, wanting her to do something Anne Jane spends her days trying to remember.’

‘Really an interesting case,’ thought the future medical man, who added aloud: ‘Well, Mrs Tippens, I can but repeat my advice, let your cousin see a good doctor, and lock her door on the outside.’

‘I am sure, sir, I feel very thankful to you,’ answered Mrs Tippens, and she went downstairs and tossed up a very pretty little supper for Dick and his cousin, during the course of which meal she announced in a laughing way to her husband that Anne Jane was not very well, and felt a bit nervous, and that she, Luce, meant to sleep with their visitor; which information she accompanied with such sly looks and such a world of meaning in her face, that Tippens, looking up from the crab, cucumber, lettuce, and vinegar he was eating in disastrous quantities, answered shortly:

‘All right, old girl.’

Consequently, Mrs Tippens, for once, leaving the custody of her children with Dick, after having cleared away the supper things retired to rest with Miss Tippens.

Mrs Tippens took the side of the bed next the door (which she locked), and firmly decided she would not go to sleep that night. For about an hour, or an hour and a half, she lay awake, thinking, as she afterwards said, ‘of all manner of things’; then she ‘fell over,’ and did not awaken till the room was full of the light of a summer morning’s early dawn.

For a moment she could not remember where she was; then she remembered, and stretching out her hand, found the place her cousin should have occupied empty and cold.

Anne Jane was gone, and Mrs Tippens, rushing to the door, found it unlocked.

Mrs Tippens, assisted by her husband and Mr Maldon and his friend Mr Whipple, and one of the second-floor lodgers, who was out of work, scoured the neighbourhood for Miss Tippens, and scoured it in vain. That young person seemed to have vanished as utterly as old Mrs Jones. They sought her high, they sought her low; the whole street in confusion; as popular opinion had as yet denned no limit to the powers possessed by Dr Jones’ wife, little doubt existed that Anne Jane had been carried off bodily by the grey-haired lady as an expiation of the sins of the Tippens’ family in continuing the tenancy of a house on which it was ‘well-known a curse rested.’

Who had cursed it, on whom it rested, were matters considered quite irrelevant to the general issue. So far sickness had passed over and misfortune shunned the latest dwellers in the haunted dwelling. But now it was felt the day of reckoning had been only deferred in order to inflict a heavier punishment. Old Mrs Jones was about to vindicate herself at last. ‘And if you don’t get out of the place quick,’ said Mrs Jubb, who, during the whole of that memorable morning, conducted herself after the manner of some ancient prophetess, ‘you’ll find far worse to follow. I always told you I couldn’t sleep in the house if the hall was paved with golden guineas.’

‘Dick, Dick,’ cried Mrs Tippens, ‘didn’t I beg and pray of you long ago to move—that very first night the children saw old Mrs Jones?’

But Dick, not being in a fit state of mind either to argue with his wife or endure her reproaches, mounted to the seat of his neat hansom and drove aimlessly about the streets, asking useless questions of persons totally unable to afford the slightest information as to his cousin’s whereabouts.

About three o’clock, however, Anne Jane, in person, appeared at her cousin’s door, accompanied by a policeman. Early that morning she had been found trying to open the garden gate of a house in the Stratford Road; as, when remonstrated with concerning the impropriety of her conduct, she still continued knocking and pushing the gate, the policeman seized her left arm and told her she couldn’t be allowed to make such a noise; then, for the first time, she turned her face towards him, and he saw, as he expressed himself, ‘there was something stranger about the matter than he thought.’

Immediately it dawned upon his understanding that though the woman’s eyes were wide open, she did not see him, and that she was not drunk, as he had supposed, but fast asleep.

Therefore he woke her up, and inquired what she was doing there at four o’clock in the morning.

The girl’s terror when, suddenly recalled to consciousness, she found herself only partially dressed, in a road perfectly unknown to her, held firmly in the grasp of a stalwart policeman, was so great as utterly to deprive her of speech. She tried to collect her senses, she strove to ask him how she came there, but no word passed her parched and trembling lips. In a very agony of shame and distress, she allowed herself to be led to the station-house; but there, when addressed by the inspector, she broke into a passion of weeping, which culminated in a fit of violent hysterics, that in turn was succeeded by a sort of wandering the doctor regarded as a precursor of some severe illness. ‘The girl is quite overwrought,’ he said; ‘I wonder who this old Mrs Jones is she talks so much about.’

‘Oh, save me from her—oh, Luce!—oh, Dick! don’t let her come near me again.’ At that moment Anne Jane again cried in terror.

‘No, she shan’t come near you, we won’t let her,’ observed the doctor soothingly; and after a time he managed to give this strange patient a quieting draught.

‘Anyone,’ as Mrs Tippens observed, when subsequently commenting upon the conduct of the police, ‘could see Anne Jane was a thoroughly respectable girl, who had been carefully brought up,’ and accordingly she did not feel so grateful as she ought to have done to the inspector for sending her cousin home in a cab.

‘She’ll be better with her friends than in a hospital,’ said the doctor; and accordingly, when she recovered sufficiently to mention Mr Tippens’ address, she was despatched thither under the care of a staid and respectable member of the force.

But nothing could induce her to enter Dick’s house, till Mrs Tippens had solemnly promised at once to go out and find a lodging for her elsewhere.

‘If I sleep here again she’ll never rest till she has killed me,’ declared the girl; which utterance seemed so mysterious to the policeman, that, pressing for an explanation, he was told the whole story of ‘old Mrs Jones.’

‘And the young woman solemnly declares,’ went on the man who repeated the narrative to the inspector, ‘that Dr Jones’ wife came to her bedside, and bade her get up and dress, and opened the door of the room, and the front door, and made her walk till she was fit to drop through places and streets she had never seen before, till they came to the garden gate of St Julian’s; she passed through that and kept beckoning her to follow—“and I know I tried hard, and that you must have awakened me.” ’

‘It’s a rather unlikely tale altogether,’ observed the inspector, but still he kept the matter in his mind, and thought it worth while to make a few inquiries and set a detective to work; and had a watch kept on Dr Schloss, the great German chemist, who lived in a very secluded manner at St Julian’s—the result of all being that one day a policeman appeared at the house, and asking if he could see the doctor, arrested him on the charge of ‘Wilful Murder.’

‘But this is absurd,’ said the great chemist, speaking in very broken English. ‘Who is it that you make believe I have murdered?’

‘Your wife, Zillah Jones,’ was the answer. Whereupon the doctor shrugged his shoulders and inquired who Zillah Jones might be.

Asked if he would come quietly with the policeman, he laughed, and said, ‘Oh, yes.’ Warned that any statement he made would be used as evidence, he laughed again, and observed he had no statement of any kind to make.

On the way he conducted himself, as was remarked, in a very quiet and gentlemanlike manner; and, arrived at his destination, he requested to be allowed to sit down, as he did not feel very well.

‘It is a serious charge to bring against an innocent person,’ he said, still speaking in imperfect English. That was the last sentence he uttered. When he was requested to get up, he did not stir. He was dead—dead as the woman whose remains were found, embalmed in a locked box, in his laboratory at St Julian’s.

No one, however, in the neighbourhood where Dr Jones once lived believed, or could be persuaded to believe Dr Schloss and Dr Jones were one and the same person, or that the embalmed body was that of old Mrs Jones. Nothing will ever shake the local mind in its conviction that Dr Jones is still enjoying existence in ‘foreign parts,’ or that his wife was buried in the cellar of that old-fashioned house where evil befell all who tried to live.

In proof of which conviction it is still told in bated breath how Anne Jane was never able to go back to service, but was forced eventually to return to her native village, where to this day she earns a modest living with her needle; and how, on the very night of that day when Mr Tippens removed his family and goods, cabs and horses excepted, to a dwelling he had taken in the next street, where the lodgers accompanied Mrs Tippens, a passer-by, looking up at the old house, saw something like the figure of a woman, carrying a torch, flit from window to window, and story to story, and ere he had time to think what it meant, beheld flames bursting from every part of the old building.

Before the engines came the fire had got such a mastery it was with difficulty Mr Tippens’ horses were saved, to say nothing of the adjoining houses.

It was indeed a conflagration to be remembered, if for no other reason than that standing on the parapet in the fiercest of the fire a woman, with streaming grey hair, was seen wringing her hands in such an apparent agony of distress that an escape was put up, and one of the brigade nearly lost his life in trying to save her.

At this juncture someone cried out with a loud voice:

‘It was a witch the doctor married, and fire alone can destroy her!’

Then for a moment there fell a dead silence upon the assembled crowd, while the dreadful figure was seen running from point to point in a mad effort to escape.

Suddenly the roof crashed in, millions of sparks flew upwards from the burning rafters, there was a roar as if the doors of some mighty furnace had been suddenly opened, a blaze of light shot straight towards the heavens, and when the spectators looked again there was no figure to be seen anywhere, only the bare walls, and red flames rushing through the sashless windows of the house once haunted by ‘Old Mrs Jones’.