read, or to let him
read to me, the two letters he had.

"Pet," he said, "I will tell you something. One reason they move me so is,
that they are strangely like words written by a woman whom I knew thirty
years ago. I did not believe two such women had been on the earth."

I kissed his hand when he said this; yet a strange unwillingness to read
Esther's letters withheld me. I felt that he had right, and I had not.

But the end of the mystery was near. It was revealed, as it ought to have
been, to my uncle himself.

One night I was wakened out of my first sleep by a very cautious tap at my
door, and my uncle's voice, saying,--

"Nell--Nell, are you awake?"

I sprang to the door instantly.

"O uncle, are you ill?" (My aunt had not yet returned.)

"No, pet. But I want you down-stairs. Dress yourself and come down into
the library."

My hands trembled with excitement as I dressed. Yet I was not afraid: I
knew it was in some way connected with "Esther," though my uncle had not
mentioned her name.

I found him sitting before the library table, which was literally covered
with old letters, such as we had before seen.

"O uncle!" I gasped as soon as I saw them.

"Yes, dear! I have got them all. There was no ghost!"

Then he told me in few words what had happened. It seemed that he had gone
down himself into the cellar, partly to satisfy himself that all was right
with the furnace, partly with a vague hope of finding another of the
letters. He had found nothing, had examined the furnace, locked the door
at the head of the cellar stairs, and gone up to his bed-room. While he
was undressing, a strange impulse seized him to go back once more, and see
whether it might not happen to him as it had to Robert, to find a letter
on returning after a few moments' interval.

He threw on his wrapper, took a candle, and went down. The first thing he
saw, on opening the door, which he had himself locked only five minutes
before, was a letter lying on the same fourth stair!

"I confess, Nell," said he, "for a minute I felt as frightened as black
Bob. But I sat down on the upper step, and resolved not to go away till I
had discovered how that letter came there, if I stayed till day-light!"

Nearly an hour passed, he said; the cold wind from the cellar blew up and
swayed the candle-flame to and fro. All sorts of strange sounds seemed to
grow louder and louder, and still he sat, gazing helplessly in a sort of
despair at that mot