Winnie's cat, of course; or the wind rattling the blinds;--nevertheless, Tom went to his door, and looked out.
He was exceedingly sleepy, and the entry was exceedingly dark, and, though he had not a breath of faith in ghosts, not he,--was there ever a boy who had ?--and though he considered such persons, as had, as candidates for the State Idiot Asylum, yet it must be confessed that even Tom was possessed of an imagination, and this imagination certainly, for an instant, deluded him into the belief that a dim figure was flitting down stairs.
"Who's there ?" said Tom, rather faintly.
There was no reply.

A curious sound, like the lifting of a distant latch by phantom fingers, fell upon his ear,--then all was still.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Tom.

Nevertheless, Tom went to the head of the stairs, and looked down; went to the foot of the stairs, and looked around.

The doors were all closed as they had been left for the night.
Nothing was to be seen; nothing was to be heard.
"Curious mental delusions one will have when one is sleepy," said Tom, and went back to bed, where, the reader is confidentially informed, he lay for fifteen entire minutes with his eyes wide open, speculating on the proportion of authenticated ghost-stories;--to be sure, there had been some; it was, perhaps, foolish to deny as much as that.
After which, he slept the rest of the night as soundly as young people of sixteen, who are well and happy, are apt to sleep.
That night, also, Gypsy had a dream.
She dreamed that Miss Melville sailed in through the window on an oar, which she paddled through the air with a parasol, and told her that her (Gypsy's) father had been hung upon a lamp-post by Senator Sumner, for advocating the coercion of the seceded States, and that Tom had set Winnie afloat on the Kleiner Berg Basin, in a milk-pitcher.

Winnie had tipped over, and was in imminent danger of drowning, if indeed he were not past hope already, and Tom sat up in the maple-tree, laughing at him.
Her mother appeared to have enlisted in the Union army, and, her father being detained in that characteristic manner by Mr.Sumner, there was evidently nothing to be done but for Gypsy to go to Winnie's relief.