and down the old man's room three times,
from end to end, and then I shall have conquered it." I went in with the
candle in my hand; but the moment I came near the bed, the air got thick
with them.'

'With the faces?'

'Yes, and I even felt that they were in the dark behind the side-door,
and on the little staircase, floating away into the yard. Then, I called
you.'

Mr Boffin, lost in amazement, looked at Mrs Boffin. Mrs Boffin, lost in
her own fluttered inability to make this out, looked at Mr Boffin.

'I think, my dear,' said the Golden Dustman, 'I'll at once get rid of
Wegg for the night, because he's coming to inhabit the Bower, and it
might be put into his head or somebody else's, if he heard this and it
got about that the house is haunted. Whereas we know better. Don't we?'

'I never had the feeling in the house before,' said Mrs Boffin; 'and I
have been about it alone at all hours of the night. I have been in the
house when Death was in it, and I have been in the house when Murder was
a new part of its adventures, and I never had a fright in it yet.'

'And won't again, my dear,' said Mr Boffin. 'Depend upon it, it comes of
thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.'

'Yes; but why didn't it come before?' asked Mrs Boffin.

This draft on Mr Boffin's philosophy could only be met by that gentleman
with the remark that everything that is at all, must begin at some time.
Then, tucking his wife's arm under his own, that she might not be left
by herself to be troubled again, he descended to release Wegg. Who,
being something drowsy after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally
of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased to stump away,
without doing what he had come to do, and was paid for doing.

Mr Boffin then put on his hat, and Mrs Boffin her shawl; and the pair,
further provided with a bunch of keys and a lighted lantern, went
all over the dismal house--dismal everywhere, but in their own two
rooms--from cellar to cock-loft. Not resting satisfied with giving that
much chace to Mrs Boffin's fancies, they pursued them into the yard and
outbuildings, and under the Mounds. And setting the lantern, when all
was done, at the foot of one of the Mounds, they comfortably trotted to
and fro for an evening walk, to the end that the murky cobwebs in Mrs
Boffin's brain might be blown away.

There, my dear!' said Mr Boffin when they came in to supper. 'That was
the treatment, you see. Completely worked round,