ly. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel
Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied
eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this
wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.

They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of
construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it
consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great
antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the
new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed
together an enormous structure--Lyon must make a point of going all over
it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought
the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before--it hadn't
been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be
in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house--he had
not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was
very curious indeed--a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where
they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret
staircase. To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the
modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful.
There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before,
during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The
place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after
all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period.

'My room is in the old part too then--I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's
very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I
observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity
of the corridor and staircase--the first short one--after I came out.
That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away,
in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
impression on it), for half a mile.'

'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.

'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.

His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?'

'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any