e finger!"

"Gertrude, then?"

"Gertrude is in the parlor writing."

So she was. I called her up. She looked surprised and troubled.

"It must have been Bridget," I proceeded, authoritatively, "or Tip."

"Bridget is out walking with Tip and the baby. Jane is in the kitchen
making pies."

"At any rate these are not the clothes which you locked into the closet,
however they came here."

"The very same, Fred. See, I noticed the numbers 6 upon the stockings, 2
on the night-caps, and--"

"Give me the key," I interrupted.

She gave me the key. I went to the cedar closet and tried the door. It
was locked. I unlocked it, and opened the drawer in which my wife
assured me that the clothes had lain. Nothing was to be seen in it but
the linen towel which neatly covered the bottom. I lifted it and shook
it. The drawer was empty.

"Give me those clothes, if you please."

She brought them to me. I made in my diary a careful memorandum of their
naming and numbering; placed the articles myself in the drawer,--an
upper drawer, so that there could be no mistake in identifying it;
locked the drawer, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the
closet, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the room in which
the closet was, and put that key in my pocket.

We sat down then in the hall, all of us; Allis and Gertrude to fill the
mending-basket, I to smoke and consider. I saw Tip coming home with his
nurse presently, and started to go down and let him in, when a faint
scream from my wife arrested me. I ran past Miss Fellows, who was
sitting on the stairs, and into my room. Allis, going in to put away
Tip's little plaid aprons, had stopped, rather pale, upon the threshold.
Upon the bed lay some clothing, folded, as before, in rude, hideous
imitation of the dead.

I took each article in turn, and compared the name and number with the
names and numbers in my diary. They were identical throughout. I took
the clothes, took the three keys from my pocket, unlocked the
"cedar-room" door, unlocked the closet door, unlocked the upper drawer,
and looked in. The drawer was empty.

To say that from this time I failed to own--to myself, if not to other
people--that some mysterious influence, inexplicable by common or
scientific causes, was at work in my house, would be to accuse myself of
more obstinacy than even I am capable of. I propounded theory after
theory, and gave it up. I arrived at conclusion upon conclusion, and
threw