y-else, of Kleiner
Berg Basin and the Dipper, in which it was supposed Mrs. Surly had
secreted a blind kitten, which it was somehow or other imperatively
necessary should be drowned, for the well-being of the beautiful and
unfortunate heiress,--that the ghost of this atrocious Baron was going
down stairs, with white silk stockings on his feet and a tin pan on his
head.

At this crisis Tom awoke, with a jump, and heard, or thought he heard, a
slight creaking noise in the entry. Winnie's cat, of course; or the wind
rattling the blinds;--nevertheless, Tom went to his door, and looked out.
He was exceedingly sleepy, and the entry was exceedingly dark, and, though
he had not a breath of faith in ghosts, not he,--was there ever a boy who
had?--and though he considered such persons, as had, as candidates for the
State Idiot Asylum, yet it must be confessed that even Tom was possessed
of an imagination, and this imagination certainly, for an instant, deluded
him into the belief that a dim figure was flitting down stairs.

"Who's there?" said Tom, rather faintly.

There was no reply. A curious sound, like the lifting of a distant latch
by phantom fingers, fell upon his ear,--then all was still.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Tom. Nevertheless, Tom went to the head of the
stairs, and looked down; went to the foot of the stairs, and looked
around. The doors were all closed as they had been left for the night.
Nothing was to be seen; nothing was to be heard.

"Curious mental delusions one will have when one is sleepy," said Tom, and
went back to bed, where, the reader is confidentially informed, he lay for
fifteen entire minutes with his eyes wide open, speculating on the
proportion of authenticated ghost-stories;--to be sure, there had been
some; it was, perhaps, foolish to deny as much as that.

After which, he slept the rest of the night as soundly as young people of
sixteen, who are well and happy, are apt to sleep.

That night, also, Gypsy had a dream.

She dreamed that Miss Melville sailed in through the window on an oar,
which she paddled through the air with a parasol, and told her that her
(Gypsy's) father had been hung upon a lamp-post by Senator Sumner, for
advocating the coercion of the seceded States, and that Tom had set Winnie
afloat on the Kleiner Berg Basin, in a milk-pitcher. Winnie had tipped
over, and was in imminent danger of drowning, if indeed he were not past
hope already, and Tom sat up in the maple-tr