ing. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy
than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she
honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space
allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of
the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade
me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested
from my work, feeling that I had faithfully observed the traditions of
an ancient and illustrious family. My only bitter reflection, so far as
my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the
performance of my design I had labored; but this no living soul would
ever know.

After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and
Inheritances and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had
done--except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building
the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful
examination of the work, and upon his report Elizabeth Mary Turmore
was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of
law I was put into possession of her estate, and although this was not
by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it
raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the
great and good.

Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the
ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in several places about the
country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These
rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed
widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the
apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined
with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit
attired in most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even
drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there
might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that
only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some
workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered
strong-room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had
built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of
Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be
willing to accept as an equivalent to the privilege of ranging