tment failed--she went into a small business and became
insolvent--then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from
housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place,
though nothing peculiar against her character was ever alleged. She was
considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still
nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse,
from which Mr J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very
house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her wedded
life.

Mr J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room
which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread
while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.

The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we went
into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors.
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite
large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and
rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the
existence of which had never been suspected. In this room there had been
a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many
years. By the help of candles we examined this place; it still retained
some mouldering furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of
the fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers
against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned
articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a
hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and
buttons, like those yet worn in court dresses--a handsome court
sword--in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which
was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few
silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of
entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a
kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much
trouble to get picked.

In this safe were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.
They contained colourless volatile ess