The storm had not gone down, and as it beat upon the old place
with exceptionally wild and powerful gusts, the feeble structure seemed
to shrink from them and tremble in every portion.

On these occasions doors to the wardrobes and closets of the strange
room would open suddenly as if sprung from their fastenings by unseen
hands, while panels would slide back and forth, cracks in the ceilings
and walls would open alarmingly, until, in fact, to the woman's vivid
imaginations every portion of the lonely old chamber or its weird
furnishings seemed possessed of supernatural life or motion. The fact
is, Mrs. Winslow was trembling like the house itself; but after a few
moments she snuffed the waning candle which the frugal Mrs. Deck had
given her, and in its flickering rays hastily began preparing for bed.

Just as she bent over to blow out the candle, some invisible assistant
did the work for her, and at the same moment a hissed "_Beware!_" caused
her to start with a scream and plunge for the bed, into which she
scrambled after upsetting a chair or two, when she pulled the covering
over her head and groaned with fright.

And now the blessed materializations began.

A sudden click and then a sliding sound above her head announced that
the "control" had begun operations, and in a moment a few grains of
plastering and some strange and weird combinations of musical sounds
seemed to simultaneously fall into the room. The plaster, of course,
came right down, some of it upon exposed parts of the trembling medium's
person; but the music, which seemed to be badly out of harmony, appeared
to have the power of circling in the air, which it did for some little
time, and as suddenly ceased as it had begun, when from these mysterious
upper regions came a long, low, tremulous, unearthly groan, that died
away into a ghastly sigh as the storm clutched the decayed old mansion
and shook it until it rattled and rattled again.

"My God!" quavered the half-smothered woman, "that's Mrs. Deck's first
man's ghost; he'll kill me! Mur----!"

She had begun to shout "Murder!" but a still more awful voice proceeding
from the direction of the bureau bade her keep silence.

She was silent for a moment, but the storm wailed about the house so
dismally that the "poor dear," who, according to Mrs. Deck, was brave
enough to cheerily retire in what had been the bed-chamber of the dead,
could bear the horror of her position no longer, and began a vocal
la