this denouement was that the small room in the
turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the
worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age, it
snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a quantity of
plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the room at the time.
His precious box was rescued from amongst the debris and brought into
the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within his bureau. Sir
John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never had an opportunity
of searching for that secret passage, the existence of which I had
surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would have brought
her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr. Richards asking
Mrs. Stevens who the woman was whom he had overheard talking to Sir
John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I saw from her
manner that it was not the first time that she had had to answer or
avoid the same question.

"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.

I confessed that I had.

"And what do YOU think of it?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine.

"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or
not?"

"It is certainly a woman."

"Which room did you hear it from?"

"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."

"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the doors
as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just
as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"

"Why, what else COULD it be?"

He looked at me hard.

"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a
woman, how does she get there?"

"I don't know."

"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a practical
business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a
ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he
felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of
Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by
this time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation
came to me, it never reached the others.

And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night
from neuralgia, and about midday I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne
to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the indexing of
Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work there f