belonged to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this
might have been her sleeping-room. I had sufficient curiosity to open
the drawers: there were a few odds and ends of female dress, and two
letters tied round with a narrow ribbon of faded yellow. I took the
liberty to possess myself of the letters. We found nothing else in the
room worth noticing--nor did the light reappear; but we distinctly
heard, as we turned to go, a pattering footfall on the floor--just
before us. We went through the other attics (in all four), the footfall
still preceding us. Nothing to be seen--nothing but the footfall heard.
I had the letters in my hand: just as I was descending the stairs I
distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint soft effort made to draw
the letters from my clasp. I only held them the more tightly, and the
effort ceased.

We regained the bed-chamber appropriated to myself, and I then remarked
that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was thrusting
himself close to the fire and trembling. I was impatient to examine the
letters; and while I read them, my servant opened a little box in which
he had deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring; took them out,
placed them on a table close at my bed-head, and he occupied himself in
soothing the dog, who, however, seemed to heed him very little.

The letters were short--they were dated; the dates exactly thirty-five
years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a
husband to some young wife. Not only the terms of expression, but a
distinct reference to a former voyage, indicated the writer to have been
a seafarer. The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly
educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions
of endearment there was a kind of rough wild love; but here and there
were dark unintelligible hints at some secret not of love--some secret
that seemed of crime. "We ought to love each other," was one of the
sentences I remember, "for how every one else would execrate us if all
was known." Again: "Don't let any one be in the same room with you at
night--you talk in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone;
and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to
life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's):
"They do!" At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand
had written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th of June, the