iss--"

"Oh, you won't scare me."

"Mrs. Packard wouldn't like me to do that. She never listens to a
word from us about these things, and we don't believe the half of it
ourselves; but the house does have a bad name, and it's the wonder of
everybody that the mayor will live in it."

"Sounds?" I repeated. "Lights?"--and laughed again. "I don't think I
shall bother myself about them!" I went gaily out.

It did seem very puerile to me, save as it might possibly account in
some remote way for Mrs. Packard's peculiar mental condition.

Up-stairs I found Ellen. She was in a talkative mood, and this time I
humored her till she had told me all she knew about the house and its
ghostly traditions. This all had come from a servant, a nurse who had
lived in the house before. Ellen herself, like the butler, Nixon, had
had no personal experiences to relate, though the amount of extra wages
she received had quite prepared her for them. Her story, or rather the
nurse's story, was to the following effect.

The house had been built and afterward inhabited for a term of years
by one of the city fathers, a well-known and still widely remembered
merchant. No unusual manifestations had marked it during his occupancy.
Not till it had run to seed and been the home of decaying gentility, and
later of actual poverty, did it acquire a name which made it difficult
to rent, though the neighborhood was a growing one and the house itself
well-enough built to make it a desirable residence. Those who had been
induced to try living within its spacious walls invariably left at
the end of the month. Why, they hesitated to say; yet if pressed would
acknowledge that the rooms were full of terrible sights and sounds which
they could not account for; that a presence other than their own was
felt in the house; and that once (every tenant seemed to be able to
cite one instance) a hand had touched them or a breath had brushed
their cheek which had no visible human source, and could be traced to
no mortal presence. Not much in all this, but it served after a while to
keep the house empty, while its reputation for mystery did not lie idle.
Sounds were heard to issue from it. At times lights were seen glimmering
through this or that chink or rift in the window curtain, but by the
time the door was unlocked and people were able to rush in, the interior
was still and dark and seemingly untouched. Finally the police took
a hand in the matter. They were on the sc