She remembered the unexplainable footstep which she had heard in the padlocked room in the early dusk of that new-year's-day, when Mrs.Tadman and she explored the old house; and she associated these two sounds in her mind as of a like ghostly character.

From this time forward she shrank with a nervous terror from that darksome passage leading to the padlocked door at the end of the house.

She had never any occasion to go in this direction.

The rooms in this wing were low, dark, and small, and had been unused for years.

It was scarcely any wonder if rats had congregated behind the worm-eaten wainscot, to scare nervous listeners with their weird scratchings and scramblings.