e not yet become re-accustomed to the light. I pause. I
could almost swear that somebody, two steps lower down behind me,
stopped at the same instant.

Is there anyone playing the fool? Is it Milburd? I'll chance it, and
ask. I say, "Milburd?" cautiously. No. Not a sound. I own to being a
little nervous. Someone--Boodels, I think--once said that fine natures
were always nervous.

_Happy Thought._--When nervous, reason with yourself quietly.

I say, to myself, reasoning, this is not _fright_: this is not
_cowardice_: it's simply nervousness. You wouldn't (this addressed to
myself) be afraid of meeting a ... a ... for instance ... say ... a
ghost ... no. Why should you? You've never injured a ghost that you know
of, and why should a ghost hurt you? Besides ... nonsense ... there are
no ghosts ... and as to burglars ... the house doesn't belong to us yet,
and so if I meet one, there'd be no necessity to struggle ... on the
contrary, I might be jocosely polite; I might say, "Make yourself at
home; you've as much right here as I have." .... But, on second
thoughts, no one would, or could, come here to rob this place. It's
empty......

Odd. I cannot find the door I came in at. I thought that when I entered
by it, I stepped on to a landing, but I suppose that it is only a door
in the wall, and opens simply on to a step of the stairs.

Perhaps this is an unfrequented staircase. One might be locked up here,
and remain here, for anything that the old woman, or her husband, would
know about it.

If one was locked away here, or anywhere, for how long would it remain a
secret?

When one has been absent from town for instance, for months, and then
returns, nobody knows whether you've been in your own room all the time,
or in Kamschatka. They say, "Hallo! how d'ye do? How are you? Where have
you been this age?" They've never inquired. They've got on very well
without you. Important matters, too, which "absolutely demand your
presence," as the letter says, which you find on your table six months
afterwards, settle themselves without your interference.

The story of the Mistletoe Bough, where a young lady hides herself in an
oak chest, and is never heard of for years (in fact never at all until
her bones were found with her dress and wreath,) is not so very
improbable.

Suppose the old woman forgot this staircase, suppose my party went off
thinking that I was playing them some trick; supposing they stick to
that belief for f