hich the Tiled or Tyled House--for I find it spelt both ways--stood.

This Alderman Harper had agreed for a lease of the house for his
daughter, who was married to a gentleman named Prosser. He furnished it,
and put up hangings, and otherwise went to considerable expense. Mr. and
Mrs. Prosser came there sometime in June, and after having parted with a
good many servants in the interval, she made up her mind that she could
not live in the house, and her father waited on Lord Castlemallard, and
told him plainly that he would not take out the lease because the house
was subjected to annoyances which he could not explain. In plain terms,
he said it was haunted, and that no servants would live there more than
a few weeks, and that after what his son-in-law's family had suffered
there, not only should he be excused from taking a lease of it, but that
the house itself ought to be pulled down as a nuisance and the habitual
haunt of something worse than human malefactors.

Lord Castlemallard filed a bill in the Equity side of the Exchequer to
compel Mr. Alderman Harper to perform his contract, by taking out the
lease. But the Alderman drew an answer, supported by no less than seven
long affidavits, copies of all which were furnished to his lordship, and
with the desired effect; for rather than compel him to place them upon
the file of the court, his lordship struck, and consented to release
him.

I am sorry the cause did not proceed at least far enough to place upon
the files of the court the very authentic and unaccountable story which
Miss Rebecca relates.

The annoyances described did not begin till the end of August, when, one
evening, Mrs. Prosser, quite alone, was sitting in the twilight at the
back parlour window, which was open, looking out into the orchard, and
plainly saw a hand stealthily placed upon the stone window-sill outside,
as if by some one beneath the window, at her right side, intending to
climb up. There was nothing but the hand, which was rather short but
handsomely formed, and white and plump, laid on the edge of the
window-sill; and it was not a very young hand, but one aged, somewhere
about forty, as she conjectured. It was only a few weeks before that the
horrible robbery at Clondalkin had taken place, and the lady fancied
that the hand was that of one of the miscreants who was now about to
scale the windows of the Tiled House. She uttered a loud scream and an
ejaculation of terror, and at the same